Next in our Faces of the Delta series, you will meet Reverend Tyronne Edwards: 5th generation resident of Phoenix, La., community leader and organizer and coastal restoration advocate. How has coastal land loss impacted your life? 'We lost everything we had during Hurricane Katrina. It was frightening to us. We now realize that if we had the right protection, the proper barriers-wetlands-we could protect our communities.

What would you do if your job was to manage a small coastal community besieged by job loss, irate voters, hurricanes, oil spills, and hipsters? Here's a way to find out: boot up your laptop or tablet and check out the new "serious game," Digital Cards Against Calamity. Cards Against Calamity is designed to be not only entertaining, but also educational by raising awareness of the issues surrounding coastal resilience, backed up by government data.

In Louisiana, and in many places, the term "delta" is widely used. That's mainly because we live on a delta - the Mississippi River Delta - and much of the land that comprises coastal Louisiana was built by the Mississippi and other rivers creating new deltas over millennia. From a more technical standpoint, identifying what a delta is and its various components may not be as easy for most people. Many people picture a delta as a place where a river meets open water, and land protrudes outward as sediment accumulates near the mouth.

Where rivers meet the ocean, coastlines tend to bend either inward or outward, creating estuaries and deltas. But how do they get those shapes?

It is often easy to use empty metaphors or scientific jargon to explain the impacts and future related to coastal land loss. But when scientists take the time to elevate the voices of people that are losing their homes and livelihood, science and stories blend to have deeper impacts on those looking from the outside. In this talk, Madelyn Smith shares her photography, and the stories of people photographed, to illuminate the urgency and broader impacts of Louisiana's coastal land loss.

Coastal erosion is a natural, ongoing process that has been happening for thousands of years. This video explains how it happens and the factors that affect the rate of erosion.

Natural land-building deltaic processes of the Mississippi River Delta have been severely limited by artificial river levees, which prevent water and sediment from flowing over the banks during spring floods. To counteract the effects of severing the connection between the river and the delta, focus has been placed on reconnecting the river to the surrounding wetlands by the creation of artificial outlets, also called diversions.

The Sand Motor is a nature-based alternative to the Netherlands' famed network of walls, levees and sea gates, and much cheaper than the vast, multimillion-dollar beach rebuilds Louisiana is undertaking along its sandy barrier islands and rapidly deteriorating coastline. Where Louisiana's projects seek to re-create almost precisely what was lost, the Dutch simply pile the sand in a strategic location where it will be pushed naturally into places where it will still provide protection.

"Located in Maryland, USA, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is part of the largest area of tidal marsh within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and is of regional ecological significance for its wetlands and for the wildlife populations it supports. However, over 5,000 acres of tidal marsh have converted to open water on the refuge since 1938... In December 2016, 26,000 cubic yards of sediment was pumped in a thin-layer application over approximately 40 acres of tidal marsh on the refuge. The purpose of this project is to raise the elevation of the existing marsh platform."

After [Hurricane Katrina], community members formed a faith-based nonprofit called the Zion Travelers Cooperative Center. Their work began as a grassroots recovery effort, with neighbors helping neighbors gut houses and remove debris, to prepare for rebuilding. Today, the group's work continues. They educate residents about climate change and how rising seas and increasingly intense storms threaten the area. And members advocate for solutions that could help protect them, including wetlands restoration and stronger levees.