SEFS assistant professor Francisca Santana is co-PI on a grant from the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to support Tribal climate adaptation efforts in southeastern Louisiana.

The team, co-led by researchers from Louisiana Sea Grant and members of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe (“PACIT” or “Tribe”) in southeastern Louisiana, was awarded $780 thousand. PACIT members were fishers, hunters, or farmers historically, and climate-related hazards have impacted their livelihoods and ability to thrive. Increased tropical storm impacts, including Hurricane Ida’s devastating impacts in August 2021, have resulted in the loss of their traditional lands, greater storm surge, and more frequent flooding.

The Tribe is identifying community-based strategies to improve their resilience to future storms, including mitigating coastal erosion, flooding, storm surge, and winds that threaten the community’s property, sacred sites, and fishing areas. These strategies will focus on nature-based solutions (NBS) that integrate local and traditional ecological knowledge of Tribal members and provide co-benefits to ecosystem services and broader restoration goals.

Santana will lead the effort to understand and incorporate local ecological knowledge (LEK) of PACIT members into the development and design of the proposed nature-based solution, a network of living shorelines. This will include conducting interviews with local knowledge experts and leading participatory mapping focus groups to create opportunities for Tribal learning and input in the design and siting of living shorelines in the community.