Bayou

[4] The term Bayou Country is most closely associated with Cajun and Creole cultural groups derived from French settlers and stretching along the Gulf Coast from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama, and picking back up in South Florida around the Everglades, with its center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Bayous are susceptible to pollution such as runoff[9] from nearby urban communities (which can result in eutrophication) and oil spills given their low-lying position in the watershed.

[12] Agricultural activity results in byproducts of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers, which can drastically alter delicate balances in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

A study conducted on 3 agricultural bayous in the lower Mississippi River Basin found that the addition of nitrogen and phosphorus to sample mesocosms affected the decomposition of maize crop and willow oak detritus.

[13] While both species showed an increase in decomposition rate after N and P nutrient enhancement, the maize crop broke down faster than the native willow oak.

A study conducted on three bayous (Cow Oak, Howden, Roundaway) in the western Mississippi River watershed found that pesticides released into bayou sediments cause significant impairment of the amphipod Hyalella azteca both spatially and temporally.

[12] Despite being banned 40 years ago in the United States by the Environmental Protection Agency, traces of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), once used in agriculture as an insecticide, were found in sediment and amphipod tissue.

[16] The bayou wetlands of Bataria Bay, Louisiana experienced increased shoreline erosion as a direct result of the Deepwater horizon oil spill.

Human development activities, such as the increase of impervious surfaces, results in quicker, high intensity flood pulses, delivering larger quantities of these nutrients to the ecosystem at a much more rapid rate.

[21] Bayous have experienced trends of land cover loss and conversion to impervious surfaces, of which has been associated with influxes of metals such as aluminum, copper, iron, lead, and zinc.