Citation

Kozlov M. Nature 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/d41586-021-02456-z

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

When Hurricane Ida tore through New Orleans more than a week ago, researchers there were relieved that the category-4 storm didn't entirely flood the city. Its flood-regulating levee system, fortified after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, seemed to hold. What took them by surprise was that Ida ravaged Louisiana's power grid, 30% of which has yet to be restored -- leaving residents to bake in the heat, universities closed and researchers struggling to preserve samples and keep projects running.

Ida is the sixth tropical cyclone to make landfall in Louisiana since the start of 2020, and scientists are worried that the frequency of the storms, combined with a failure by state and local officials to adapt infrastructure to climate change, will imperil the millions of people who live along the Louisiana coast. Scientists also worry that the relentlessness of the storms could dissuade researchers from joining universities there and from conducting crucial investigations of the ecological impacts of climate change along the coast.

"You have to wonder, how much more can this area take and continue to spring back?" says Allyse Ferrara, a fish biologist at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, who started a community-based coastal-restoration project after seeing the damage from Katrina. Thibodaux, which is southwest of New Orleans, was directly in Ida's path and is unlikely to regain power for weeks...

Language: en

Keywords

Climate change; Institutions; Lab life; Scientific community