One has to do with sediment delivery to the Gulf. When you walk on those mudflats that I've shown you, you're essentially walking on eroded Grand Canyon material. So I would suggest going to the Grand Canyon and Arizona and not going to the mudflats of the delta if you want to see the Grand Canyon. So essentially, it's representing thousands of years of erosion of the Grand Canyon.

Since the turn off of the river, that delivery of sediment to the Gulf has ceased and what we're seeing is a slow erosion of that sedimentary environment because of the very energetic tides of the Gulf. We don't know what the rate of sediment erosion is yet, although we initiated some experiments last year to try to address this question. But we do know that it will have an effect on the benthic or sea floor environments off the northern gulf. Sediment composition is going to change and benthic organisms are, in general, very specific about their choices of sediment composition.

The other aspect of ecological impact that we focused on is Mulinia coloradoensis. Here's one of those billions and billions of shell sites. All of these dunes that you see here as far as the eye can see and way back in this photo are all shells of Mulinia, literally billions of skeletons of this animal that's accumulated over the last several thousand years. Now we only find a handful of them.

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