Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts (2006) This report is the result of a requirement by the Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Preparedness Task Force to examine the history of national…
Author: richards
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The Origin Story for Horizontal Levees
A fundamental premise of the most Louisiana coastal restoration plans, including the Master Plan, is that coastal salt marsh acts as a horizontal levee, reducing hurricane surge for each mile of marsh. The primary source that is usually cited for…
Why the Master Plan will not protect Louisiana and what we should do instead
Coastal Louisiana is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico. While the media focuses on the loss of land, polls of residents indicate that the real concern is the flood risk to the communities, farms, and businesses in southern Louisiana. The Louisiana…
Images of Hurricane Katrina
Original link: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Organization/History/imagery/Katrina/ Full Size
Reflecting upon 10 Years of Geoengineering Research
http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/(ISSN)2328-4277.GEOENGIN1/ Reflecting upon 10 Years of Geoengineering Research: Introduction to the Crutzen + 10 Special Issue “Ten years ago, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen called for research into the possibility of reflecting sunlight away from Earth by injecting sulfur particles into the stratosphere.…
Implications for US National Security of Anticipated Climate Change
Implications for US National Security of Anticipated Climate Change (2016) Key Points Long-term changes in climate will produce more extreme weather events and put greater stress on critical Earth systems like oceans, freshwater, and biodiversity. These in turn will almost…
Science and the Storms: the USGS Response to the Hurricanes of 2005
Original link Circular 1306: Science and the Storms: the USGS Response to the Hurricanes of 2005 Preface This report is designed to give a view of the immediate response of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to four major hurricanes of 2005:…
Arctic Report Card: Update for 2016
J. Richter-Menge, J. E. Overland, and J. T. Mathis, Eds., 2016: Arctic Report Card 2016, http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card. Highlights The average surface air temperature for the year ending September 2016 is by far the highest since 1900, and new monthly record highs…
Underwater – A Report on the Threat of Sea Level Rise in the New York City Metro Area
Under Water How Sea Level Rise Threatens the Tri-State Region, A Report of The Fourth Regional Plan, December 2016. Coastal regions around the world are struggling to adjust to the gradual but relentless encroachment of ocean waters caused by climate…
Louisiana Coastal Land Loss Since 1956
Land Area Change in Coastal Louisiana After the 2005 Hurricanes: A Historical Perspective (from 1956) – Full Size Poster This map only shows land as lost when it is turned to open water. There are large areas of land, such…
EPA Rejects Corps EIS for Columbia River Coal Terminal
millennium-bulk-terminals-nepa-eis The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reviewed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ September 2016 Millennium Bulk Terminals – Longview Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Corps DEIS), (EPA Region 10 Project Number: 13-0034-COE). We conducted our review according to EPA’s…
Mississippi Delta Subsidence in Action – Fort Proctor
Photo by Marli Miller – marlimillerphoto.com A visualization of century-scale impacts of subsidence and sea level rise as seen in a time sequence reconstruction at Fort Proctor in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana by Chris McLindon Fort Proctor is a pre-civil war…
Sea Level Rise Threatens Major US Navel Bases
Kelly A Burks-Copes et al., Risk Quantification for Sustaining Coastal Military Installation Asset and Mission Capabilities (RC-1701) (2014). (original link) Objective The objective of this project was to develop and test a risk-based methodology to evaluate threats to critical installation assets…
FEMA Standards for Substantial Improvement / Substantial Damage Determinations
FEMA, 2010. Substantial Improvement / Substantial Damage Desk Reference, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC When buildings undergo repair or improvement, it is an opportunity for local floodplain management programs to reduce flood damage to existing structures. More than 21,000…
Who has to pay for the MRGO Closure and Wetlands Restoration?
Most Corps of Engineers wetlands projects require the state or other non-federal sponsor to pay for part of the cost. This is both a cost-sharing measure and a measure to make sure that the state really needs the project –…
A Comprehensive Restoration Plan for the Gulf of Mexico
The Trustees have reached a settlement with BP to resolve BP’s liability for natural resource injuries from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Under this settlement, BP will pay up to $8.8 billion for restoration. Based on our thorough assessment of impacts to…
Thousands of Homes Keep Flooding, Yet They Keep Being Rebuilt Again
Katherine Bagley has written an excellent discussion of the repetitive loss problem in the National Flood Insurance Program, highlighting a Louisiana property that has flooded 40 times over the past four decades: Thousands of Homes Keep Flooding, Yet They Keep…
Introduction to FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (August 2016)
CRS – Congressional Research Service Paper: Introduction to FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (August 2016) Summary The NFIP was established by the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (NFIA, 42 U.S.C. §4001 et seq.), and was most recently reauthorized by…
Suburban sprawl and poor preparation worsened flood damage in Louisiana
Suburban sprawl and poor preparation worsened flood damage in Louisiana An excellent post by Professor Craig Colten on the events leading to the August 2016 flood: Reports of flooding in Louisiana may conjure up images of Hurricane Katrina, but these…
Why was the Louisiana Flood of August 2016 so severe?
See also: How Growth-Focused Politics Helped Build Vulnerability in Louisiana’s Flood Zones Louisiana has a long history of major floods. These are driven by Mississippi River floods, extreme rainfall events, and hurricane surge. There was a heavy rain event in March 2016…
Louisiana Flood August 2016 – Updates
This post that contains updates and links to new posts and information relevant to the Louisiana flood of August 2016.
FEMA Proposes New Rules On Elevation for Rebuilding After Flooding
44 CFR Part 9 – Updates to Floodplain Management and Protection of Wetlands Regulations To Implement Executive Order 13690 and the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard; Proposed Rule Executive Summary The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is proposing to amend…
Louisiana Flood of 1983 – Suing the State for Causing Flooding
The mayor of Walker, a small town near Baton Rouge that flooded in the August 2016 flood, wants to sue the State of Louisiana for flooding caused by the recent expansion of federal highway I12. (While the Federal Department of…
FEMA Resources for Flood Resilient Construction
(original link) Flood Resistant Provisions of the 2015 International Codes® (May 2015) This document is a compilation of flood resistant provisions, prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), of the 2015 I-Codes (IBC, IRC, IEBC, IMC, IPC, IFGC, IFC,…
What is a 100/500/1000-Year Flood Event?
General References on the 1% (100-year) flood standard: Reducing Flood Losses: Is the 1% Chance (100-year) Flood Standard Sufficient?
What is a 100/500/1000 year rain event?
See Also: What is a 100/500/1000-Year Flood Event? References Hershfield, D.M., 1961. Rainfall Frequency Atlas of the United States, Technical Paper No. 40. Weather Bureau, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC. This started the 100 year rain event system. Although it…
National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) – Resource Documents
Click on this aggregator post to see all the posts in this blog that deal with the National Flood Insurance Program.
Mississippi River Flood History
The record of Mississippi River floods goes back to the earliest explorers: High Flows and Flood History on the Lower Mississippi River Below Red River Landing, LA (1543 – Present) and the paleoclimate records show megafloods greatly exceeding even the 1927 flood: Brown,…
Cape Wind Energy Project
This is a project to develop off-shore wind off Cape Cod. It’s relevance to the Louisiana Coast is that the appeals court ruled that the EIS was incomplete because there was not sufficient geological information about the sea bottom and…