Raging Floodwaters on the Potomac River (IMAGE)
Caption
These are floodwaters laden with suspended sediment during the peak discharge of Hurricane Isabel flood on the Potomac River at Great Falls, Virginia, September 2003. Over 160,000 cubic feet per second of runoff, carrying sediment eroded from Piedmont riverbanks and farm fields upstream, submerged the falls. Floods of this magnitude recur about once a decade at Great Falls. New research by scientists at the University of Vermont and Imperial College, London, published in the February 2015 issue of the journal Geology, show that eroded soil, carried in rivers like this one, accelerated dramatically in the wake of European forest-clearing and intensive agriculture in North America.
Credit
Paul Bierman, UVM
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