Louisiana’s coastline—including the incredibly valuable and productive Mississippi River Delta—is vanishing at an alarming rate. Every 100 minutes, a football field of land disappears into the Gulf of Mexico. This coastal land loss is a crisis of national importance, as it affects people, wildlife and jobs not only across the region but also throughout the United States.

To fully grasp the scope and urgency of Louisiana’s coastal crisis, it is important to understand how the Mississippi River Delta naturally formed over thousands of years, as well as the varied man-made and natural causes of land loss that are plaguing the region.

Learn more about how the Mississippi River Delta formed.