Erosion, Sediment

Stream channels often are disturbed by human activities such as construction or agriculture. In recent years, scientists and engineers have begun to apply the principles of natural channel design to the construction and restoration of stream channels. Natural channel design, or “stream restoration” involves rebuilding a channel with the appropriate dimensions, slope, and plan view pattern so that...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has evaluated clear-water and live-bed pier, contraction, and abutment scour associated with over 200 bridges throughout South Carolina for many years, predominantly at non-tidally influenced sites. These evaluations resulted in the development of...

The City of Raleigh partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to assist in assessing streambank erosion hotspots along the City of Raleigh’s stream network to support the City’s efforts of prioritizing future stream mitigation projects. Streambank erosion potential will be assessed using remotely sensed light detection and ranging (lidar) data, field assessments of streambank conditions...

In 2002, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a collaborative effort to find more sustainable ways to manage river infrastructure to maximize benefits for people and nature. As of 2021, the Sustainable Rivers Program study area includes 40 rivers, 89 reservoirs, and 10,953 downstream river miles. The USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center and USGS Wetland and...

There is evidence that bridge deck runoff has a relatively high loading of a variety of constituents such as nutrients, solids, pesticides, metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Information on the quality of bridge deck runoff in North Carolina is, however, lacking. Stormwater permits are designed to reduce nonpoint source loadings of anthropogenically derived constituents to...

Floodplain and wetland areas provide critical ecosystem services to local and downstream communities by retaining sediments, nutrients, and floodwaters. The loss of floodplain functionality due to land use conversion and degradation reduces the provisioning of these services. Assessing, quantifying, and valuing floodplain ecosystem services provide a framework to estimate how floodplain systems...

As part of the statewide response to the flooding, the USGS and S.C. Department of Transportation (SCDOT) conducted a cooperative study to collect high-water mark (HWM) data at 50 selected road crossings. The HWM elevations and descriptive data have been posted on the USGS Short-Term Network (STN). The STN is a national-scale application and database designed to support USGS event-based sensor...

The primary objective of this project is to develop an integrated procedure for assessing scour potential at riverine bridges in South Carolina utilizing the regional bridge-scour envelope curves developed in the three previous field investigations.

Past stormwater monitoring has indicated that bridge deck runoff has relatively high concentrations of a variety of constituents such as nutrients, solids, pesticides, trace metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The objective of this investigation is to quantify the downstream changes in receiving water-quality conditions during periods of observable stormwater runoff from selected...