Repeated Hurricanes Reveal Risks and Opportunities for Social-Ecological Resilience to Flooding and Water Quality Problems

Schaffer‐Smith, Danica; Myint, Soe W.; Muenich, Rebecca Logsdon; Tong, Daoqin; DeMeester, Julie E.

doi:10.1021/acs.est.9b07815

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Second, we didn't consider the spatial extent of surge flooding, only the tide gauge locations. Schaffer-Smith et al (2020) found the total flood extent was similar between the two storms in North Carolina, with Florence causing more extensive flooding in the southeastern part of the state. Third, this is a purely statistical study and does not offer reasons for the difference in spatial compounding between Matthew and Florence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Spatially Compounded Surge Events: An Example from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence

Curtis¹,

Polt²,

Kruse³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. The simultaneous rise of tropical cyclone induced flood waters across a large hazard management domain can stretch rescue and recovery efforts. Here we present a means to quantify the connectedness of maximum surge during a storm with geospatial statistics. Tide gauges throughout the extensive estuaries and barrier islands of North Carolina deployed and operating during Hurricanes Matthew (n = 82) and Florence (n = 123) are used to compare the spatial compounding of surge for these two disasters. Moran's I showed the occurrence of maximum storm tide was more clustered for Matthew compared to Florence, and a semivariogram analysis produced a spatial range of similarly timed storm tide that was four times as large for Matthew than Florence. A more limited data set of fluvial flooding and precipitation in eastern North Carolina showed a consistent result – multivariate flood sources associated with Matthew were more concentrated in time as compared to Florence. Although Matthew and Florence were equally intense, they had very different tracks and speeds, which influenced the timing of surge along the coast. We hope this method could be used for other landfalling tropical cyclones to better understand the drivers that lead to spatially compounded surge events.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Spatially Compounded Surge Events: An Example from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence

Curtis¹,

Polt²,

Kruse³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Because they are collected posterior to the event, HWMs do not have date information specific to the time of peak flooding. However, they can still be used as evidence of inundated/non‐inundated conditions near the site (Schaffer‐Smith et al., 2020), thus aiding visual interpretation of high‐resolution aerial/satellite imagery from NOAA and Google Earth (with specific collection date information) to identify flood hotspots and manually digitized ground reference polygons. Finally, by overlaying the randomly generated points with these flood‐related datasets (such as HWM and high‐resolution aerial/satellite imagery), we manually digitized polygons near each point and visually interpreted and labeled them in 9 different classes (Figure S1a and Table S3 in Supporting Information ), including open surface water, open herbaceous vegetation on flood waters, sparse trees in flood waters, inundation beneath forest, wet grassland (or unharvested cropland), dry grassland (or fallow cropland dominated by bare soil), grass‐dominated mosaic landscape, tree‐dominated mosaic landscape, and upland forest.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood Extent Mapping During Hurricane Florence With Repeat‐Pass L‐Band UAVSAR Images

Wang

Pavelsky

Yao

et al. 2022

Water Resources Research

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Extreme precipitation events are intensifying due to a warming climate, which, in some cases, is leading to increases in flooding. Detection of flood extent is essential for flood disaster response, management, and prevention. However, it is challenging to delineate inundated areas through most publicly available optical and short‐wavelength radar data, as neither can “see” through dense forest canopies. In 2018, Hurricane Florence produced heavy rainfall and subsequent record‐setting riverine flooding in North Carolina, USA. NASA/JPL collected daily high‐resolution full‐polarized L‐band Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data between September 18th and 23rd. Here, we use UAVSAR data to construct a flood inundation detection framework through a combination of polarimetric decomposition methods and a Random Forest classifier. Validation of the established models with compiled ground references shows that the incorporation of linear polarizations with polarimetric decomposition and terrain variables significantly enhances the accuracy of inundation classification, and the Kappa statistic increases to 91.4% from 64.3% with linear polarizations alone. We show that floods receded faster near the upper reaches of the Neuse, Cape Fear, and Lumbee Rivers. Meanwhile, along the flat terrain close to the lower reaches of the Cape Fear River, the flood wave traveled downstream during the observation period, resulting in the flood extent expanding 16.1% during the observation period. In addition to revealing flood inundation changes spatially, flood maps such as those produced here have great potential for assessing flood damages, supporting disaster relief, and assisting hydrodynamic modeling to achieve flood‐resilience goals.

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“…Therefore, domain experts deemed critical the prioritization of catchments by extent of intact, mitigable land that is also under pressure for near‐ and long‐term (i.e., 10–50 years) development. Likewise, anticipated stressors associated with climate change (e.g., frequent flooding, increasing temperatures) motivated participants to prioritize catchments by extent of mitigable land that possesses physical features associated with high site resilience and decrease the risk of impairments across larger geographical domains (Anderson et al, 2014; Schaffer‐Smith et al, 2020). In this context, we define site resilience as intact natural areas that sustain a diversity of species and ecosystems, support essential relationships among ecological systems, and allow for adaptive changes (Anderson et al, 2014).…”

Section: Framework Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating principles and tools of decision science into value‐driven watershed planning for compensatory mitigation

Sanchez

Eaton

García

et al. 2022

Ecological Applications

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Several environmental policies strive to restore impaired ecosystems and could benefit from a consistent and transparent process—codeveloped with key stakeholders—to prioritize impaired ecosystems for restoration activities. The Clean Water Act, for example, establishes reallocation mechanisms to transfer ecosystem services from sites of disturbance to compensation sites to offset aquatic resource functions that are unavoidably lost through land development. However, planning for the prioritization of compensatory mitigation areas is often hampered by decision‐making processes that fall into a myopic decision frame because they are not coproduced with stakeholders. In this study, we partnered with domain experts from the North Carolina Division of Mitigation Services to codevelop a real‐world decision framework to prioritize catchments by potential for the development of mitigation projects following principles of a structured decision‐making process and knowledge coproduction. Following an iterative decision analysis cycle, domain experts revised foundational components of the decision framework and progressively added complexity and realism as they gained additional insights or more information became available. Through the course of facilitated in‐person and remote interactions, the codevelopment of a decision framework produced three main “breakthroughs” from the perspective of the stakeholder group: (a) recognition of the problem as a multiobjective decision driven by several values in addition to biogeophysical goals (e.g., functional uplift, restoring or enhancing lost functionality of ecosystems); (b) that the decision comprises a linked and sequential planning‐to‐implementation process; and (c) future risk associated with land‐use and climate change must be considered. We also present an interactive tool for “on‐the‐fly” assessment of alternatives and tradeoff analysis, allowing domain experts to quickly test, react to, and revise prioritization strategies. The decision framework described in this study is not limited to the prioritization of compensatory mitigation activities across North Carolina but rather serves as a framework to prioritize a wide range of restoration, conservation, and resource allocation activities in similar environmental contexts across the nation.

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Repeated Hurricanes Reveal Risks and Opportunities for Social-Ecological Resilience to Flooding and Water Quality Problems

Cited by 25 publications

References 67 publications

Spatially Compounded Surge Events: An Example from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence

Spatially Compounded Surge Events: An Example from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence

Flood Extent Mapping During Hurricane Florence With Repeat‐Pass L‐Band UAVSAR Images

Integrating principles and tools of decision science into value‐driven watershed planning for compensatory mitigation

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