The Paleoenvironment of the Lower Mississippi River Delta During the Late Holocene

Palynological, lithological, loss-on-ignition, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy data were collected from a modified Livingstone core retrieved from Bay Jimmy, Louisiana. This data indicates a slow, general regression of the marsh due to sea level rise. This trend was punctuated by several catastrophic events including floods from around ca. 600 Yr BP and ca. 360 Yr BP, a fire around ca. 950 Yr BP, and still more flooding caused by the landfall of Hurricane Audrey in AD 1957, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in AD 2005. In more recent years (220 Yr BP to present) the marsh appears to have thinned out. This may be due to anthropogenic barriers, which have inhibited the marsh’s natural retreat as witnessed over the past 1200 years recorded by this core