Hurricane Floyd effects on coastal ecology

Date Uploaded: 06/14/2024

Hurricane Floyd effects on coastal ecology

This satellite image, from Landsat 7, shows the sediment washed into the ocean from Hurricane Floyd’s rains.

A NASA oceanographer, using spaceborne technologies to study the effects of Hurricane Floyd, has seen indications that there may be significant impacts on the marine food chain along the North Carolina coast due to extensive rainfall in the region.

“Following Hurricane Floyd, record-breaking rains continued to soak the area, washing mountains of sediment and waste into the water system. Now rivers and tributaries along the Atlantic are choked and major ecological changes are happening,” said Gene Feldman, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Periodically, levels of dissolved oxygen in the water have dropped dramatically as organic matter decomposes, and aquatic life has been threatened in dozens of estuaries and peripheral habitats, commonly referred to as ‘dead zones.’ The current changes in the area may have lasting repercussions for hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

Public Domain

Public Domain is a copyright term that is often used when talking about copyright for creative works. Under U.S. copyright law, individual items that are in the public domain are items that are no longer protected by copyright law. This means that you do not need to request permission to re-use, re-publish or even change a copy of the item. Items enter the public domain under U.S. copyright law for a number of reasons: the original copyright may have expired; the item was created by the U.S. Federal Government or other governmental entity that views the things it creates as in the public domain; the work was never protected by copyright for some other reason related to how it was produced (for example, it was a speech that wasn't written down or recorded); or the work doesn't have enough originality to make it eligible for copyright protection.