Examining North Carolina’s recent tropical cyclone history: twenty years on the Neuse River
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Patrick Brent Brackett (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Sarha Praskievicz
Abstract: Tropical cyclones (TCs) pose a persistent threat to North Carolina. The state’s coastal plain and outer banks lie between 78 and 75 degrees W, farther east than any other southeastern state. In the last 150 years there have been more than 400 tropical and subtropical cyclones that have affected the state. This project seeks to examine what has become a recurring problem. The storms come, they flood, and the most vulnerable members of society lose everything. Major research questions include: 1) How do the geographic extent of the individual floods compare to the 100-year floodplain and its margins? 2) How many buildings fell within the flooded area? 3) How do the individual floods compare to one another, and what factors explain their differences? The methodology for this study used NASA Landsat 5 and NOAA aerial imagery to examine the extent of the flooded area. Supervised and unsupervised land cover classifications were created to compare the floods on a pixel-by-pixel level. Key results from this study included the number of total buildings in the study area that had been flooded in any one or all of the TCs, the observation that TC Matthew was by far the most disastrous of the three TCs studied, and that both TCs Matthew and Florence met or exceeded the defined 100-year floodplain in the area of study. Although this study is limited in scope, it may provide a stepping stone to further examination of how best to deal with the new reality of 100-year floods every decade in a socially vulnerable urban landscape.
Examining North Carolina’s recent tropical cyclone history: twenty years on the Neuse River
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Created on 5/1/2020
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2020
- Keywords
- Flooding, Neuse River, Tropical Cyclones
- Subjects
- Hurricanes $z North Carolina
- Floods $z North Carolina
- Neuse River (N.C.)