Summary for Wednesday January 27th

Today, we began to discuss floods and flooding. Flooding is an important facet of water resources because we (as a species) choose to distribute ourselves near sources of water (for domestic, agricultural, and industrial water, transportation, hydro power) and, as a result of this proximity to water , floods become a problem. We will spend the next few lectures discussing flooding in general, locally, and surrounding the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Flooding occurs when a river's "normal' channel is exceeded by some significant amount due to and increase in discharge.
Flooding occurs due to

acute rain
chronic rain
sudden snow melt
dam creation or destruction
more than one of the above

Flooding severity is a function of:

the amount of precipitation
the rate of precipitation
c. the catchment area (size of basin or watershed)
d. slope of ground within catchment area
e. factors that affect runoff vs. infiltration

Floods can be divided into regional and flash- you should be able to differentiate between the two.

For lecture on Friday, Please read:

The portion of Virginia Floods By Barbara McNaught Watson that talks about the 1969 flooding related to Hurricane Camille

The force of nature By Jacob Geiger (W&L '09)

Also, make sure that you send me an e-mail with the largest US settlement that is not located near some large body of water. Subject: no river: City Name

PowerPoint slides shown in lecture today are now available as a .pdf on Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.