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Hurricanes, groundwater and floods


CIROH

Problem Statement

You are a hydrologist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studying the impacts of hurricanes on groundwater levels in a coastal aquifer on the U.S. Atlantic Coast. You have been asked to evaluate whether groundwater will contribute to the flooding in the area and where the flooding will occur. Your report will help town managers decide whether to permit the construction of a new coastal community center 100 feet behind the dunes.

Module Overview

This module will provide you with the basic knowledge to recommend if construction of a community center should proceed considering historical data from previous hurricane impacts near the proposed site. In the first section you will learn how hurricanes form, why they cause flooding and what other impacts they have in coastal communities. In the second section you will learn how to create and analyze report quality time series of hydrologic variables and how to process these time series data to identify different hydrologic processes driving flooding using a python notebook. In the third section, you will be synthesizing all the time series analysis you conducted to support your final recommendation about building the community center.

Topics Covered

In this module you will learn about the relationships between hurricanes, groundwater and floods as you assess if it is viable to build a community center in the North Carolina Outer Banks. You will then review the drivers and impacts of hurricanes on the hydrologic system. Specifically, you will create and analyze time series in python to identify the drivers of groundwater level changes. Finally, you will predict potential flooding zones given a coastal topographic map and groundwater level data to evaluate the suitability of constructing a new coastal community center.

Prerequisites

Students need to have basic knowledge of the different variables of the hydrologic system and their interactions, particularly precipitation and groundwater levels. A review of the HydroLearn module titled Groundwater Flow will be useful. Students are expected to know how to perform basic mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) in python.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this module, students will be able to:

  • Describe a hurricane and its impact in coastal communities
  • Construct report-quality time series using python
  • Analyze time series to identify the effect of hurricanes in the hydrologic system
  • Predict potential flooding zones given a coastal topographic map, as well as groundwater, precipitation, and total water level data
  • Evaluate the suitability of a new construction considering flooding hazards associated with hurricanes

Course Authors

Course Staff Image #1

Rachel Housego

My research program focuses on studying how water moves in the subsurface. Groundwater provides an essential freshwater resource for communities, agriculture and industry, and supports the health of the ecohydrological system. I study the interactions between surface water forcings (e.g. waves, currents, tides, surge), climate forcings, morphological evolution, and groundwater dynamics which act on a broad range of spatial and temporal scales throughout the hydrosphere. Understanding these feedbacks and mechanisms is essential for predicting water resource availability and environmental hazards such as flooding, erosion and pollutant transport. I use both in situ field measurements (surface water, groundwater, atmospheric and geotechnical) and numerical models simulating groundwater flow and transport (MODFLOW, HydroGeoSphere) to evaluate these processes in complex environments from the mountains to the coasts.

rhousego@psu.edu
Course Staff Image #2

Laura Rosales

Nevada State College, Physical and Life Sciences, Faculty Member College of Southern Nevada, Physical Science, Faculty Member

laura.rosales@nevadastate.edu

Target Audience

Undergraduates, juniors/ seniors, enrolled in a Geoscience or an Environmental Science program or in an Introductory Data Analysis or Hydrology course.

Tools Needed

Computers with access to the Internet to access the different websites, including Google Collab to open the Jupyter Notebook used to create the time plots series. Word processor software will be needed to write the report.

Expected Effort

The module should be completed in approximately 10 hours of dedicated work.

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  2. Course Number

    NRES304
  3. Classes Start

  4. Estimated Effort

    10:00
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