Roy Dokka, pioneering Louisiana scientist, dies
Published: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 7:23 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 7:23 p.m.
NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana State University geologist who shed light on the deep underground forces that contribute to the state's rapidly vanishing coastal wetlands has died.
Roy Dokka died Monday, LSU officials confirmed Wednesday. An exact cause of death was not immediately released. He was 59.
Dokka gained prominence by questioning the science underpinning much of Louisiana's massive and urgent coastal restoration plans. He complained that large-scale plans were moving forward even though many of the processes causing devastating land loss and subsidence in coastal Louisiana were, in his view, not acknowledged.
Coastal Louisiana, the home of New Orleans, is at the center of a vigorous scientific and socio-political debate about rising sea levels, flooding and the future of one of the nation's most important port and oil regions. Dokka's work was considered important in that debate. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost about 2,100 square miles of coast due to a host of problems, from levee building to deforestation.
To this debate, Dokka added his studies of the deep geologic forces at play under the soft delta muds of Louisiana. He argued that deep-seated faulting and the sheer load of sediment coming down the Mississippi River had caused Louisiana to slowly sink into the Gulf of Mexico. His theories posed a problem for Louisiana because he foresaw that the sinking would continue indefinitely.
Virginia R. Van Sickle-Burkett, a climate change scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey who specializes in the Louisiana delta, called Dokka "a prolific and highly regarded scientist in his field."
"Roy kept us all honest," she said. "He postulated things that other scientists had not considered. He was a pioneer."
But his message wasn't exactly pleasing to hear for folks in Louisiana.
"He was very pessimistic about the future of south Louisiana," said Len Bahr, a coastal scientist who had advised governors. "The bottom-line is that he says that levees are the only long-term solution, and they would not be a solution. I think he had a big part of the picture, but not the whole picture."
Bahr added: "There has not been enough emphasis on the underlying geophysics."
There is lively debate among scientists about whether coastal Louisiana, made up of the fragile delta of the Mississippi River, can be restored by artificial means, such as diverting rivers and sediment to restore marsh and barrier islands that have been eroding at alarming rates.
After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Dokka worked closely with federal officials to develop a network of state-of-the-art benchmarks to accurately measure the height of structures such as bridges, levees and roads using global positioning system technology. By the time of his death, he had established a comprehensive network to track land changes. He was the director of the Center for Geoinformatics and the Louisiana Spatial Reference Center at LSU.
"The GPS stations are one the most important technological improvements since Katrina," said Windell Curole, a manager who runs a system of levees that Dokka studied and measured south of New Orleans. "In Louisiana, elevation is everything. Before (Dokka) it would take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get your elevation."
Tim Osborn, the regional manager for the Office of Coast Survey at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Dokka "was able to paint the big picture why our landscape was changing" and uncovered numerous inaccuracies in elevation across the coast.
Van Sickle-Burkett called that work "a game changer" for Louisiana.
"He showed dramatic rates of subsidence of roads and levees," she said. "Had we known some of that 20 years ago, there might have been a different layout for evacuation routes. The rates he came up with were stunning."
Dokka also believed policy makers were unwilling to tell residents how dangerous and uncertain the future of coastal region is. He warned that subsidence would continue to put people in danger.
"He is not the only one who has said we have a dire situation in Louisiana," Van Sickle-Burkett said. "He was committed to the truth and serving his family and the university and Louisiana."
Dokka, a native of southern California, finished his undergraduate and graduate studies in California. He obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Southern California in 1980 and joined LSU as an assistant professor shortly thereafter.
He focused on studying the deep geology of the Mojave Desert before turning his attention to the Mississippi River delta.
Randy Osborne, a technologist who worked at Dokka's Center for Geoinformatics, said he was survived by two daughters and his wife. Funeral arrangements were pending, the university said.
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