South Louisiana native Carl A. Brasseaux, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA former director of the Center for Louisiana Studies, has spent a lifetime studying the peoples and cultures of the Louisiana coastal plain. He is the author of more than three dozen books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, including Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877 and Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country, both published by University Press of Mississippi. He is a former Louisiana Writer of the Year.

Donald W. Davis, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA has been involved in coastal-related research for more than forty years on the wide array of renewable and non-renewable resources vital to the use of the wetlands. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Shore and Beach, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Louisiana Conservationists, and Louisiana History.