BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - South Louisiana’s coast has long served as a natural buffer between communities and rising water. But since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of coastal land. Dr. Torbjorn Tornqvist, a professor at Tulane University, said Louisiana is one of the most vulnerable coastal areas in the world because of climate change, sea level rise and subsidence.