Hurricanes Katrina and Rita showed the vulnerability of coastal communities and how human activities that caused deterioration of the Mississippi Deltaic Plain (MDP) exacerbated this vulnerability. The MDP formed by dynamic interactions between river and coast at various temporal and spatial scales, and human activity has reduced these interactions at all scales. Restoration efforts aim to re-establish this dynamic interaction, with emphasis on reconnecting the river to the deltaic plain. Science must guide MDP restoration, which will provide insights into delta restoration elsewhere and generally into coasts facing climate change in times of resource scarcity.
Decisions regarding potential investments in watershed resources can leave decision makers comparing "apples to oranges" when the costs of watershed improvements are measurable in dollars but the benefits are not. While traditional benefit-cost analysis simply won't work in these situations, the tools of cost effectiveness analysis and incremental cost analysis can help by providing information to support decision making. This paper presents a general analytical procedure for cost effectiveness and incremental cost analyses ans three example applications. The examples demonstrate the procedures applicability to planning for investments in a variety of resources, as well as to problem solving situations of different complexities.
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