- Back in June of 2003, the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper
published a series of articles, entitled "Washing Away" on the hurricane
threat to New Orleans. These were exceptionally well-researched and
well-written articles that are still available on the Times Picayune web
site (linked on the EENS 204 home page). If you have not already
done so, it would be worth your while to read the articles. For
now, however, we will just concentrate on one section of the articles
available at the following site:
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/content.ssf?/washingaway/goingunder.html
On that page are links to larger versions of the graphic. In order
to actually read the text on the graphic you should look at the PDF
version, and in order to more efficiently be able to pan and zoom
through the graphic, it would be much easier if you downloaded the file
to your computer, at least on a temporary basis. Again, the Adobe
Acrobat Reader will have to be installed on your computer in order to
read the file after it is downloaded. To download the file,
right-click on the link and select "Save Target As" from the drop-down
menu, then specify a location on your computer where you want the
download to go.
The graphic shows some of the effects of Hurricane Betsy (1965)
(along the left), the reasons the Louisiana Coast has become more
vulnerable (along the right), and the effects that New Orleans would
have experienced if Hurricane Georges (1998) or any similar storm had
or does actually hit New Orleans (in the central part of the graphic).
Look at the graphics and answer the following questions:
- Why has the New Orleans area become more vulnerable to
Hurricanes over the last 40 years? (give 7 reasons) (1 point)
- What is the major threat from a hurricane that is discussed
here, and why does it occur? (1 point)
- What size hurricane taking the path shown in the graphics would
be necessary to cause overtopping of the levees along Lake
Pontchartrain (note that the cross-section at the bottom of the page
shows the Lakefront levees with an elevation of 14.5 feet. In
reality, the Lakefront levees are at an elevation of 17.5 feet)? (1 point)
- What parts of the city would be least likely to flood as a
result of such a hurricane? (1 point)
- During Hurricane Katrina, much of the city of New Orleans
flooded. Go to the following site -
www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Katrina and look at figure Figure 9 on
page 8 of
the field trip guide. Compare this map with the map for the
effects of the hypothetical hurricane shown in the large map from
the Times Picayune 2003 article. What differences do you see
in terms of the areas that were actually flooded by Katrina and the
areas that were hypothesized to flood in the 2003 article? (1
point).
- What reasons can you give to explain the difference in flooded
areas between the actual flooding during Katrina and the
hypothesized flooding discussed in the 2003 article? (1 point).
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