[ Birds chirping/Wind ]
[ Music ]
[ Frog croaking ]
[ Boat engine ]
>> When I think of NASA I think of rocket ships.
>> When I think of NASA I think
of like space ships and outer space.
>> I think of space travel.
I think of -- the universe.
>> The space shuttle.
>> Hubble Telescope.
>> Space exploration.
>> Over the last few years I think NASA is more involved
in just the total environment effort.
>> I had no clue NASA came out to New Orleans
and did research about the wetlands.
>> I'm so glad!
I mean you guys have rockets.
You can fix this.
Right? I hope you can [laughing].
If you can land on the moon, you can fix the wetlands.
[ Music ]
[ Air Traffic Control chatter ]
[ Airplane taking off ]
>> Here we go, new line 32032 loaded.
[ Radio chatter ]
>> Copy that, PPA engage.
>> And release.
>> Line started.
>> Copy. Line started.
[ Music ]
>> I'm from Southern Louisiana.
This is a really unique place.
I still have family and friends here and I just want
to keep it safe and protect what they have.
[ Birds Chirping ]
[ Jet flying ]
>> Right now, Sam, the PPA operator in the back,
he's now coordinating with the radar operator
and they're flying the airplane.
This particular mission, we're imaging kind of the wetlands
and the -- basically the New Orleans, Louisiana area.
>> UAVSAR has been flying over Louisiana and collecting data
about two to three times a year since 2009.
What we do is we send out pulses from the radar and we track both
when we receive the pulses and exactly where the antenna was
when we received the pulse.
And that way we can create, synthetically,
a very long antenna with very high resolution on the ground.
>> PPA is Platform Precision Autopilot system.
What it does is goes through a tube with a very precise line.
Flying over the same line over and over allows us
to study the wetland over time.
>> By understanding how the deltas
and everything work we can potentially save many lives.
[ Music ]
>> Wetlands are important for a few reasons.
Probably the biggest reason that they are important in the state
of Louisiana is that they help push back storm surge
and they provide a space between the land and the sea
and that helps keep the sea at bay,
which helps keep flooding at bay.
>> Also for economic reasons.
The Port of New Orleans is big business and they have had
to deal a lot with the wetlands losses affecting how goods
and services are moved up and down the Mississippi River.
It doesn't matter where you live in the United States,
40% of the seafood, it's all fished right here off the coast
of Southern Louisiana.
Also, the oil infrastructure,
especially the refining is right here on the coast.
So if you like to eat seafood
and you drive a car [laughing] you are most likely,
no matter where you live in the United States,
affected by the wetlands loss that's happening
to the Southern Louisiana right now.
[ Music ]
>> This land loss is caused by a number of reasons,
but some of the biggest ones are the channelization
of the Mississippi River that prevents sediment
from reaching the wetlands, the construction of a large number
of canals, and subsidence.
The land is sinking.
UAVSAR provides the kind of broad-scale view of the coast
that we need to understand how fast it's changing,
how fast the land is sinking.
>> You see it in streets, which are in horrible condition.
Those areas that are subsiding are going
to be most vulnerable to sea level rise.
They're going to be most vulnerable to erosion
when the storms come in.
[ Thunder ]
>> Katrina was like a nightmare.
The wetlands were our barrier
but once they had all the coastal erosion,
we had no protection.
>> My house got about nine feet of water.
>>There were people almost swimming through the streets.
>>It was just kinda, a weird experience, walking through where I grew up, and the home,
and just seeing my room, just in ruins.
>>Carrying those wet photograph albums out to the curb
from these homes was really one of the saddest things I did.
[ Music ]
[ Jet flying ]
>> OK NASA 502, I show you in the block now
so you're pretty much just going
to be flying on your course, now.
Correct?
>> 502, we're going to do one more circuit here for timing
and then we'll be going inbound.
>> All right.
>> This particular study today we're looking
at delta formation.
For all the other problems Louisiana has,
it also has these two very unique deltas
that are actually growing.
We can look at how natural deltas form
so that we can understand more about sediment deposition
and maybe try to reverse loss of sediments in many
of the other deltas around the world.
One thing we've seen recently is a lot
of subsidence around the area.
And often, right next to the river or close to the levees,
and whenever the ground subsides in an area,
it actually brings the levees down also.
A really interesting thing we found was about the Bayou Corne sinkhole.
We actually learned after the fact that you could tell
that the ground had moved before the sinkhole actually formed.
So this means that maybe in the future we could tell
when a sinkhole was forming before
that catastrophic failure happens.
>> Line complete, PPA disengage.
>> Copy. Got it.
[ Airplane landing ]
>> I hope to keep working on this for a long time.
I think that we're collecting really great data.
One thing that's happening is we're getting more
and more people locally involved in this kind of science
and the more local people are involved,
the more use it will have.
[ Bells Chiming/Music ]
>> The levee system goes with the wetlands.
If we don't take care of the wetlands
and start helping the wetlands come back,
we're going to loss New Orleans as we see it today.
>> These NASA maps are going to help determine where best
to focus resources to fight the subsidence.
>> The practical thing
that UAVSAR can help inspire is the state's coastal
restoration plan.
One of the big complications with the plan is
that we don't know issues of subsidence very well to the kind
of fine scale degree that we need
to plan restoration projects.
And UAVSAR provides us with the kind of fine scale
but broad scale measurements that we need
to advance Louisiana's master plan for a sustainable coast.
>> People say this is the northernmost point
in the Caribbean.
I don't know why it was built here
but I'm thankful that it was.
You know, we have hundreds of years of culture.
And what I think is different
about New Orleans is our culture is on the surface.
It's not just a building or it's not just a kind of food we eat.
But it is everything and it permeates our rhythm,
our way of life, our way we talk.
It hangs in the air almost like this humidity
that is so oppressive here.
I want to do everything we can to protect our city
so that we don't have another catastrophe, loss of life,
loss of people, and loss of what I think is the greatest city
in America.
[ Music ]