Hazards (Floods, Droughts, Hurricanes, etc.)

The USGS is undertaking a 3-year study of water use, availability, and change in the Red River basin, which covers more than 93,000 square miles in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Water resources are being stressed by increasing water demands and increasingly severe droughts, and a comprehensive water-resource assessment of the basin is needed to enable sustainable water use.

As one of several National Focus Area Studies within the USGS National Water Census (NWC) the USGS completed a 3-year study of water availability and use in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin.

The Flood Inundation Mapping Program focuses on developing flood inundation map libraries and helping communities pair those libraries with real-time stream data and National Weather Service flood forecasts to form a two-dimensional flood warning system. Together, these products can help communities estimate the extent of a flood and identify at-risk areas and resources in advance of floodwaters...

The following technologies represent state-of-the-art tools, methodologies, and techniques that the USGS and our partners are researching and testing. Most of these techniques are experimental and not publicly available, but could significantly improve our ability to plan for and respond to flooding events in the future.

Using a flood inundation map library to estimate where floodwaters will go and how deep they will be is crucial for planning and preparing for floods. By performing loss-estimation modeling, the potential physical, economic, and social impacts of disasters can be calculated, helping communities anticipate the effects of flooding and identify specific strategies to reduce losses and speed recovery.

2011 proved to be another record-breaking flood year in the United States. USGS Water Science Center personnel from North Dakota to Louisiana measured springtime floods on the Red River of the North, the Ohio River, the Mississippi River, and many tributaries. The Missouri River and its tributaries saw record-breaking snow-melt runoff through the summer, followed closely by Hurricane Irene and...

The USGS works with a wide range of cooperators to investigate many aspects of water quality. The newly integrated USGS Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Water Science Center is assisting in furthering urban water-quality research in Northwest Indiana.

A magnitude 5.8 (Mw) earthquake occurred at 1:51 pm EDT (17:51 UTC) on August 23, 2011, at a depth of about 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) beneath the town of Mineral, Virginia, located approximately 27 miles (45 kilometers) east of Charlottesville. The event is among the largest earthquakes recorded in the eastern United States.

When planning for a flood, there are three key questions that must be answered: What areas will be flooded? How deep will the flood waters get? When will the flood arrive? Historical flooding can help a community anticipate how much impact similar flood events could have, but there are other methods and tools that can provide more accurate and nuanced estimations of a wide variety of flood...

Floods are the leading cause of natural-disaster losses in the U.S. More than 75 percent of declared Federal disasters are related to floods, and annual flood losses average almost $8 billion with over 90 fatalities per year. Although the amount of fatalities has declined due to improved early warning systems, economic losses continue to rise with increased urbanization in flood-hazard areas.