Louisiana State University College of the Coast & Environment Boyd Professor R. Eugene Turner reconstructed a 100-year record chronicling water quality trends in the lower Mississippi River by compiling water quality data collected from 1901 to 2019 by federal and state agencies as well as the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board. The Mississippi River is the largest river in North America with about 30 million people living within its watershed. Turner focused on data that tracked the water's acidity through pH levels and concentrations of bacteria, oxygen, lead and sulfate in this study published in Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.