Unified Interior Regions

While navigating the treacherous floodwaters in North Carolina to measure the rising water caused by Hurricane Floyd, U.S. Geological Survey scientists rescued four citizens threatened by the storm.

While much of eastern North Carolina remains under water, U.S. Geological Survey scientists and hydrologic technicians are boating over rooftops, submerged cars, and bridges and roads topped by deep water to collect data and determine the amount of environmental damage done by Hurricane Floyd’s heavy rains.

Flood levels from Hurricane Floyd exceeded those from Hurricane Fran, which occurred in September 1996.Preliminary assessments indicate that flood levels in much of the Tar River Basin were at the 500-year recurrence interval. (500-year flood flow has a 0.2-percent chance of being equalled or exceeded during any given year at a particular location.)

River stage and streamflow data--The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collects river stage and streamflow data at more than 200 sites across North Carolina. Near real-time data at most sites are transmitted via satellite to a central data base that compiles current and historical data.

USGS scientists from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, the National Wetlands Research Center and the Florida and Caribbean Science Center are gearing up to assess Hurricane Floyd damage to wildlife and habitat from Florida to Maine.

Wildfires have long played a key role in structuring ecosystems and plant communities in the southeastern United States. From the coastal prairie of Texas and Louisiana to the marshes and pinelands of Florida, many native species have adapted to a natural regime of frequent wildfire caused by lightning strikes.

The USGS, in collaboration with State and other Federal agencies, is evaluating the extent of erosion along North Carolina’s coastline following Hurricane Dennis. The following activities have been completed or are in progress toward that goal:

While Hurricane Dennis is little more than a soggy memory, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are hard at work trying to understand how the storm changed the landscape of beaches along the Virginia and Carolina coasts.

USGS scientists, managers and experts from a diverse spectrum of scientific disciplines are on high alert Friday as Hurricane Dennis seems poised to make landfall along the southeastern coast of the United States sometime this weekend.

The mysterious brain disease responsible for the deaths of bald eagles and American coots in Arkansas has now been found in two species of ducks discovered dead at Woodlake, North Carolina, and in bald eagles and coots from three other southeastern states.

From the large, open-air pens where they have spent the past two weeks, eight young whooping cranes survey their surroundings. The rural, central Florida landscape of open prairie, brush, and marshlands stretches away as far as the birds can see, though only a few tens of miles separate the Kissimmee release site from the metropolitan sprawl of Orlando.