Mapping Techniques

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...

Spatial/GIS data sets for North Carolina are available from numerous spatial data clearinghouses.

StreamStats is a map based Web application that provides information that can be used by engineers, managers, and planners to make informed decisions on water-related activities. Primary products are basin delineations, basin-characteristic measurements, and estimates of streamflow statistics. StreamStats allows for the analysis of upstream and downstream relations along streams.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has created flood-inundation maps for selected streamgage sites in North Carolina. These maps depict the approximate area that would be inundated at selected water levels, ranging from approximately top-of-bank to the maximum observed water level. The inundated areas depicted on these maps are approximate, and accuracy of the maps is a function of the accuracy of...