Flood-Hardened Streamgages-120

Google Earth KML File

Display USGS Flood-Hardened streamgages in Google Earth. Google Earth is an interactive, 3D viewer that seamlessly zooms from a global scale down to less than a meter in many urban areas. To display USGS Flood-Hardened Streamgages, download one of the following files and open it in Google Earth.

• Flood-Hardened Streamgages (6K)
  This is a KML file of all 120 USGS Flood-Hardened Streamgages

The USGS network of 7,400 streamgaging stations covers many of the Nations streams - but not all. The lack of a gage can be critical during a storm or when an emergency condition requires more detailed monitoring. Therefore, USGS has developed new rapidly deployable, mobile streamgages to provide short-term water-level data to those areas. These mobile gages can also serve as emergency replacements for damaged or destroyed gages. In the days following Hurricane Katrina, seven temporary streamgages with satellite telemetry were installed in and around New Orleans to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers track efforts to dewater the flooded city.

The USGS has designed and developed mobile networks of rugged, inexpensive water-level and barometric-pressure sensors to measure information about the timing, extent and magnitude of hurricane storm surge accurately.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita vividly demonstrated that storm surge can be as dangerous to coastal communities as riverine floods are to inland communities. Historically, storm-surge assessments were based on eye witness accounts and post-storm analysis of debris piles, high-water marks, and structural damage. While these assessments are useful to document the magnitude of the storm surge, they cannot provide reliable information about the timing of the inundation, nor do they facilitate reconstruction of the various flow paths by which the surge waters penetrate inland areas. In order to improve surge forecasting, design better infrastructure, and improve land use planning, quantitative data are needed to characterize the dynamic interaction of hurricane-driven surge waters and waves with coastal topography, buildings, bridges, roads, and channels.

The experimental network of 47 sensors was first deployed to areas of southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas in the hours preceding landfall of Hurricane Rita in September 2005. Information on water levels, barometric pressure, and related high-water marks were collected, and maps were generated to display flood duration, times of surge arrival and retreat, and maximum depths (available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/2006/220/). By overlaying the storm-surge information on other visualizations of hurricane impacts, such as beach erosion and housing damage, and incorporating the information into complex hydrodynamic models, scientists, engineers, and emergency managers can better understand surge mechanisms and develop designs that will lead to safer coastal communities. (http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/usgspubs/fs/fs20063136).

For more information about storm surge go to URL: http://water.usgs.gov/osw/programs/storm_surge.html.

A sensor used to collect water-level and barometric-pressure data. Future USGS sensors may be able to monitor salinity and include real-time telemetry to help emergency officials respond when storm surge threatens any coastal community.

This USGS hydrographer is deploying a storm-surge sensor (in a protective metal casing) to a bridge piling.

Streamflow data are critical for emergency managers who need to make informed decisions about flood and storm response activities, which can save lives and property. The USGS, NOAA, and many other data users are partnering to establish an emergency satellite data acquisition and dissemination unit at the USGS facility located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Currently, USGS real-time water data are relayed (about every hour) from streamgages to a single command-and-data acquisition station at Wallops Island, Virginia. Since this station is located near the coast-only about 15 feet above sea level-it is vulnerable to hurricanes and other storms. To ensure the continuity of continuous critical data in real time, the USGS, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and many other partners and data users are partnering to establish an emergency satellite data acquisition and dissemination unit at the USGS facility located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This unit is expected to be operational by the end of 2007.