Quote:
Originally Posted by MathGeek
A few possibilities, not mutually exclusive:
1. West cove is less connected to the ship channel. This means, on average, salinities in west cove are lower than on the east side. Less salt -> less land loss.
2. It may have a slightly higher average soil height when the channel was dug. Even 6" would make a big difference to how far beyond the bay salt penetrated into the marsh.
3. Possibly different soil types or different pH. I have not seen any studies, but I'd bet salinity tolerance depends a bit on soil pH.
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Valid hypotheses. I don't know about #3 though. Most of the soils are the same. You have banckers, Creole, clovelly, scatlake, aquents, and udifluvents in both areas. A big part of my thesis was the effect of soils on vegetation, and a lot of Cameron parish is the same stuff. You've got about 40% of the parish underlain by allemands, bancker, and Creole soils. Add scatlake and clovelly to that list, and the Top 5 acreages by soil type account for 50% of the total land area in Cameron parish.
I'm not sure about the pHs, but if I remember right, most of them are about the same. They are all marsh soils (then again, what isn't in Cameron).