Eroding Land and Erasing Place: A Qualitative Study of Place Attachment, Risk Perception, and Coastal Land Loss in Southern Louisiana

Southern Louisiana and its coastal bayous are sites of both frequent flooding and rapid coastal land loss, exacerbated by the increasing effects of climate change. Though much work has examined flood risk perceptions in coastal areas, few studies have considered the qualitative and contextual dimensions of perceptions of coastal land loss and its associated impacts, and how these perceptions relate to local culture, place, and intentions to mitigate personal exposure to risk. We conducted six focus groups in areas with distinct exposure to coastal land loss. Participants expressed strong attachment to community, culture, and place. Personal ties to land loss through family or social connections, experiences with fishing and water-based activities, and indirect impacts on Louisiana’s seafood industry and cuisine provided a lens for understanding the immediate impacts of coastal land loss. Participants felt that exposure to the risks of land loss was inevitable and that mitigation was beyond individual efforts, a feeling that manifested both as pessimism and as a resilient focus on collective action. Considering state history with political corruption, participants generally distrusted state-level mitigation initiatives. These findings shed light on the qualitative dimensions of coastal land loss perceptions in southern Louisiana and their relation to place attachment, mitigation intentions, and sources of risk information. While participants with personal ties to risk report feelings of exposure and inevitability, they are also embedded in communities with strong ties to place. This nuance only complicates the meanings that individuals associate with land loss and the actions that they are motivated to take; impacts of coastal land loss on the landscape and distinct place characteristics of southern Louisiana may lead to significant disruption to identity and well-being, but also provide a pathway for risk awareness and potential motivation of collective mitigation actions.

Shelter cats host infections with multiple Trypanosoma cruzi discrete typing units in southern Louisiana

Trypanosoma cruzi is a zoonotic parasite endemic in the southern US and the Americas, which may frequently infect dogs, but limited information is available about infections in cats. We surveyed a convenience sample of 284 shelter cats from Southern Louisiana to evaluate T. cruzi infection using serological and PCR tests. Parasites from PCR positive cats were also genotyped by PCR and deep sequencing to assess their genetic diversity. We detected a seropositivity rate for T. cruzi of at least 7.3% (17/234), and 24.6% of cats (70/284) were PCR positive for the parasite. Seropositivity increased with cat age (R2 = 0.91, P = 0.011), corresponding to an incidence of 7.2% ± 1.3 per year, while PCR positivity decreased with age (R2 = 0.93, P = 0.007). Cats were predominantly infected with parasites from TcI and TcVI DTUs, and to a lesser extent from TcIV and TcV DTUs, in agreement with the circulation of these parasite DTUs in local transmission cycles. These results indicate that veterinarians should have a greater awareness of T. cruzi infection in pets and that it would be important to better evaluate the risk for spillover infections in humans.