Friday Week Nine

...some questions...

1. Why is it important to begin any discussion of flooding with a look at were humans tend to live? What are the advantages to living close to water? What are the advantages of settling in flood plains? How long did it take for the US to have a top-10 population city that is not on a coast or inland navigable waterway? What are the current 3 top-10 US cities that are not reachable by boat?

2. Why do floods occur? Why is the answer more complicated than "rain"? What is the difference between acute and chronic rainfall? What about snow melt? How does the permeability of the ground change when it is frozen and how might this contribute to flooding severity during snow melt? How are floods like snowflakes?

3. Why is the permeability of the surface of a watershed so important to both the timing and a magnitude of a flood crest? What are some of the key ways to create large-scale changes in the permeability of a watershed? How and why does the amount and type of vegetation in a watershed affect flooding severity? How and why does the slope of a watershed affect flooding severity?

4. What are the differences between the specific hazards of a regional and flash floods? Why is it important to rember that binary classifications like this are more effective if you remember to consider the continuum between the end members?

5.  Why are so many of the USA's historically deadly terrestrial natural disasters floods? Why is it important to not that the deadliest natural disasters in the USA are not very deadly compared to some of the deadliest natural disasters in the history of the world?

6. Johnstown questions will be on Monday's post.
 
Slides shown today are on Sakai. Your assigned reading for Monday is A year after Waldo Canyon fire, Colorado town contends with flooding by Jenny Deam in the August 29, 2013 edition of the LA Times and Flood Forensics: Why Colorado's Floods Were So Destructive by Christopher Joyce from NPR October 08, 2013 (please note that my assigning this article should not imply my endorsement of the title's misuse of the term "forensic"). The homework assignment on recurrence interval and flooding in our area that is due next Wednesday will be up on Saturday morning (sorry for the delay). There will be a help session 7:30pm on Monday in A115- bring your computer.