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NASA invites members of the media to a virtual Q&A Monday, April 12, 2021, at 12 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. PDT) with scientists from the agency’s Delta-X – a mission designed to study land gain and loss in the Mississippi River Delta. River deltas and their wetlands are at risk of drowning as a result of sea level rise and ground sinking. The Delta-X mission will determine which parts will survive and continue to grow, and which parts will be lost.
Teams from the mission, led by researchers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, are currently taking measurements in coastal Louisiana by land, boat, and air to quantify water and sediment flow as well as vegetation growth in two primary areas of the delta region: Atchafalaya Basin, which has been gaining land through sediment accumulation, and the adjacent Terrebonne Basin, which has been rapidly losing land due to ground sinking and sea level rise. The data will be applied to models used to forecast which areas of the delta are likely to survive and which areas are not. The Delta-X team expects to have the first science results from the campaign later this year. Planning for a second campaign in the fall is also underway.
Members of the media interested in attending the livestream event should send their full names (as they appear on government-issued photo ID), media affiliation, and contact information to Esprit Smith at Esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov no later than April 12 at 9 a.m. EDT (6 a.m. PDT). Links with access details and to the visuals that will be played during the event will be provided upon receipt.
NASA’s Earth Science Division pioneers technological innovations that propel scientific understanding of the changing Earth system. Earth Venture investigations, including Delta-X, are part of the agency’s Earth System Science Pathfinder program, managed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Competitively selected orbital missions and field campaigns in this program provide innovative approaches to address Earth science research with frequent windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities. In addition to investigators from JPL, the Delta-X team includes co-investigators from Louisiana State University, Florida International University, University of North Carolina, Boston University, University of Texas-Austin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA.
