The Long-term Estuary Assessment Group, organized in 1999, is a government-academia-industry partnership focused on the scientific understanding the lower Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. Under the leadership of the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, LEAG unites a diverse team of experts to address a broad scope of river-estuary-gulf issues. With funding from NOAA and USGS, LEAG is currently conducting the following projects toward its mission, “to enable timely and effective cooperation among government, academic, and industry partners to address environmental, economic, and national security issues in one of America’s most important estuaries: the lower Mississippi River / Gulf of Mexico.”