Preparing for or Preventing the Next Vermont Flood

Irene has come and gone from Vermont, but we are going to be dealing with her effects for a long time.  Homes and businesses are destroyed, roads and bridges washed out, and people displaced and understandably concerned.

Irene was an 'almost-worst-case-scenario' for Vermont, and hopefully we won't see anything like it again in our lifetimes.  However, floods are a part of Vermont life and we will certainly face other damaging floods in the years to come.  While we can't completely stop them, there are things we can do to decrease their intensity and increase our preparedness when they do occur.

In some ways, reducing flooding in Vermont is harder than in many areas.  Unlike Pittsburgh, with highly urbanized, modified watersheds, or California, with its channelized streams and massive habitat loss, Vermont is a mainly rural state with vast, healthy forests and small towns.  Still, there is much we can do to reduce risk and impact of floods.

This post includes some ideas I have about how to reduce flooding risk, prepare for floods, and better cope when they do occur.  If you think these ideas make sense, please share this with others.  If you think they don't make sense, leave a comment and tell me why.  The most important thing right now, aside from cleanup and repairs, is looking ahead together as a state to make sure nothing like this happens again.

Below are my ideas, in somewhat random order:

City of Pittsburgh Online Map Viewer

Are you interested in maps and GIS but don't have access to ARCMAP?  Do you live in Pittsburgh?  If so, check out this City of Pittsburgh Maps website.  This website allows you to check out some different GIS data layers of the city, including zoning maps, road maps, aerial photos, and even wooded areas.  I don't see sewers or historic stream channels on here yet, but there's no reason they can't be added at some point.

One of the most interesting things I noticed while perusing these maps is that almost all of the areas that are forested are also 'landslide danger areas'.  This really demonstrates how important trees are in stopping erosion and landslides.  It also really illustrates the fact that trees were mostly preserved in areas that were hard to develop.  When pondering the nature left in the refugia amongst the city, we should also think about welcoming nature back into flatter areas as well, amongst our homes and businesses, instead of banishing it to our steep slopes.

Anyway, check out the maps, and see what you can discover on your own!

Panther Hollow Run Watershed Map on Google Maps!

Remember the Historic Channels of Squirrel Hill map I made last summer?  I've made a draft version of this map that is viewable on Google Maps!


View Panther Hollow Lost Channels V1.0.kmz in a larger map

(Be patient, it can be slow to load.)

The dark blue lines are existing watercourses, the light blue lines are historic watercourses I found on old maps, and the yellow lines are places where I think surface water once flowed, based on hydrology, but did not see on historic maps.  The light red outline is the current Panther Hollow Run watershed and the maroon line is the part of the watershed that drains into the combined sewer-stormwater system.  There are a few other features thrown in too.  Click on the features on this map for more info.

Over time I hope to expand this map over the whole Four Mile Run watershed and add other features.  Ultimately it will hopefully expand to be a big part of the outreach I am working on for my project.

I am currently looking at ways to get this on the version of Google Earth on 'smartphones', so that people can actually pull up this map while in the watershed and see where historic channels are.  Stay tuned...