Environmental restoration in the Atchafalaya Basin : boundaries and interventions

Abstract

The Atchafalaya River is a 135-mile long river in Louisiana. This makes it the largest distributary of the Mississippi. In this thesis, I will review the ways in which the Atchafalaya Basin is described as a complex system by the two agencies that are responsible for its management, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. Different stakeholders understand the Basin in a variety of ways. My question is how the different views of the Basin impact its environmental restoration and management. I answer this question by describing how the agencies transform elements of the Basin into maps, plans and various management activities by relying on science, aerial photography, and long-time residents of the Basin. I will argue that a central aspect of successful environmental restoration is that communication among different stakeholders must create a shared discourse to frame the main issues in the Basin. In the Atchafalaya Basin, this means that environmental restoration cannot be successful without some level of consensus among the stakeholders about what the Atchafalaya Basin is, how it has developed and which environmental qualities are present in the Basin today and which ones need to be restored.