Honorary membership certificate for George E. Neff

This honorary membership certificate for George E. Neff describes Neff\u27s contributions to Ice Age Floods scholarship and awareness

Summary of the beginnings of the Ice Age Floods Institute

This is a brief history of the Ice Age Floods Institute from 1993-2009. It identifies individuals key to the formation of the group and key events and activities, including the completion of publications and the effort to establish of the Ice Age National Geologic Trail

Honorary membership certificate for Paul L. Weis

This honorary membership certificate for Paul Weis describes Weis\u27 contributions to Ice Age Floods scholarship and awareness

Chapter formation policies revision

This document illustrates proposed changes to the Ice Age Floods Institute\u27s (IAFI) requirements for new chapters. It revises the original policies accepted by the IAFI Board in 2001

Honorary membership certificate for Dale F. Stradling (revision)

This document contains edits to the honorary Ice Age Floods Institute membership certificate for Dale F. Stradling. It contains a brief summary of Stradling\u27s achievements in relation to Ice Age Floods scholarship and awareness

Chapter formation policies from 2001

This document is a copy of the Ice Age Floods Institute original requirements for new chapters, which was passed by the Executive Committee in 2001

Fact Sheet: Floods and Flash Floods, 2009

Mitigation pays. It includes any activities that prevent an emergency, reduce the chance of an emergency happening, or lessen the damaging effects of unavoidable emergencies. Investing in mitigation steps now such as constructing barriers such as levees and purchasing flood insurance will help reduce the amount of structural damage to your home and financial loss from building and crop damage should a flood or flash flood occur

A review of the processes and effects of droughts and summer floods in rivers and threats due to climate change on current adaptive strategies

Europe is expected to experience a greater frequency of floods and droughts as precipitation and evapotranspiration patterns are modified by climate change in future. Several large scale drought and flooding events have occurred in Europe since 2000. Studies of drought are rare but indicate important impacts on freshwater habitats, water quality, plants and animals, which may have wider consequences for ecosystem functioning. The main factors determining the impacts of droughts and floods are event duration and seasonality of the event. A diverse habitat distribution and the presence of refugia at the reach scale confer the most resilience against droughts and floods. Management measures will also be impacted particularly with regard to riparian zones, channel morphology, flow and floodplain connectivity. However there is a conflict between management actions that target the effects of drought, and those that target floods. This report reviews information on droughts and aseasonal floods (summer floods) published since 2000 with a principal focus on small lowland rivers. Using several recent (post 2000) reviews on these topics, we describe abiotic and biotic effects of droughts and floods, providing recent European examples where possible. We explain the current status of droughts and summer floods in Europe, and where the main sources of data can be found. We highlight the threats posed by these phenomena to some of the most common current adaptive management strategies in place in the EU. To this end we use measures already described within REFRESH under Deliverables 1.1 and 1.2, and we focused solely on adaptive measures relating to riparian zones, channel morphology, flow and floodplain connectivity

The impact of flooding on aquatic ecosystem services

Flooding is a major disturbance that impacts aquatic ecosystems and the ecosystem services that they provide. Predicted increases in global flood risk due to land use change and water cycle intensification will likely only increase the frequency and severity of these impacts. Extreme flooding events can cause loss of life and significant destruction to property and infrastructure, effects that are easily recognized and frequently reported in the media. However, flooding also has many other effects on people through freshwater aquatic ecosystem services, which often go unrecognized because they are less evident and can be difficult to evaluate. Here, we identify the effects that small magnitude frequently occurring floods (\u3c 10-year recurrence interval) and extreme floods (\u3e 100-year recurrence interval) have on ten aquatic ecosystem services through a systematic literature review. We focused on ecosystem services considered by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment including: (1) supporting services (primary production, soil formation), (2) regulating services (water regulation, water quality, disease regulation, climate regulation), (3) provisioning services (drinking water, food supply), and (4) cultural services (aesthetic value, recreation and tourism). The literature search resulted in 117 studies and each of the ten ecosystem services was represented by an average of 12 ± 4 studies. Extreme floods resulted in losses in almost every ecosystem service considered in this study. However, small floods had neutral or positive effects on half of the ecosystem services we considered. For example, small floods led to increases in primary production, water regulation, and recreation and tourism. Decision-making that preserves small floods while reducing the impacts of extreme floods can increase ecosystem service provision and minimize losses

Estimating Economic Loss from Flash Flooding: A Study of Porter County, IN

This project attempted to determine what kinds of losses occurred during the flash floods of September 2009, caused by Hurricane Ike, in Northwest Indiana. Flash floods are dangerous due to how quickly they can overtake humans, houses, vehicles, and property. Flash floods caused Northwest Indiana to be under a State of Emergency, with drastic human and economic losses. Discovering where the problem is and defining the problem can help to prevent future losses. In addition, geographic software was analyzed for its helpfulness for this kind of problem. It was found that current software, including FEMA\u27s HAZUS-FM, is not suitable for analyzing flash floods for a number of reasons. Adapting the software to flash flood parameters will be the most helpful adjustment for mitigating flood losses. This on-going project was presented at the 2011 Indiana Geographic Information Council Conference