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  • US Army Corps of Engineers Extends Comment Period for Pearl River Draft Environmental Impact Statement

    VICKSBURG, Miss. — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg District, has announced a 15-day extension of the public comment period for the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) related to the Pearl River Basin, Mississippi Federal Flood Risk Management Project. Originally set to conclude on July 22, 2024, the new deadline for submitting comments is now August 6, 2024.

  • Virtual Public Meeting Scheduled for Pearl River Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS)

    VICKSBURG, Miss. — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg District, invites the public to participate in a virtual public meeting regarding the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the "Pearl River Basin, Mississippi Federal Flood Risk Management Project." This meeting is a crucial opportunity for stakeholders to learn about the project and provide feedback.

  • Reservoir release changes at Fort Randall and Gavins Point dams

    Excessive rainfall in eastern South Dakota, northeastern Nebraska, and northwestern Iowa, has led to increased runoff downstream of Gavins Point Dam. The lower releases will begin today, and will continue through June 23. Because of the lower releases, the pool elevation at Gavins Point Dam will increase about 2 feet. The elevation as of midnight, June 21, was 1207.1 feet.

  • Iron Oxidation–Reduction Processes in Warming Permafrost Soils and Surface Waters Expose a Seasonally Rusting Arctic Watershed

    Abstract: Landscape-scale changes from climate change in the Arctic affect the soil thermal regime and impact the depth to permafrost in vulnerable tundra watersheds. When top-down thaw of permafrost occurs, oxygen and porewaters infiltrate deeper in the soil column exposing fresh, previously frozen material and altering redox conditions. A gap remains in understanding how redox stratifications in thawing permafrost impact the geochemistry of watersheds in response to climate change and how investigations into redox may be scaled by coupling extensive geophysical mapping techniques. In this study, we collected soils and soil porewaters from three soil pits and surface water samples from an Arctic watershed on the North Slope of Alaska and analyzed for trace metals iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) and Fe oxidation state using bulk and microscale techniques. We also used geophysical mapping and soil thermistors to measure active layer depths across the watershed to relate accelerating permafrost thaw to watershed geochemistry. Overall, evidence showed that Fe and Mn could be useful as geochemical indicators of permafrost thaw and release of Fe(II) from thawing permafrost and further oxidation to Fe(III) could translate to a higher degree of seasonal rusting coinciding with the warming and thawing of near surface-permafrost.

  • St. Louis District, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dredge Potter underway for another dredging season

    The Dredge Potter, owned and operated by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District, is getting underway today for the 2024 dredging season ensuring safe navigation for commercial vessels on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. In 2023, drought conditions required the crew and then 92-year-old vessel to move 6.3 million cubic yards of sand, silt, and clay from the river bottom at 31 different locations.

  • Corps seeks public comments on draft environmental assessment and draft FONSI

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is requesting public comments for the proposed mitigation plan for the West Bank and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project through July 22, 2024.

  • Multiscale Observation Product (MOP) for Temporal Flood Inundation Mapping of the 2015 Dallas Texas Flood

    Abstract: This paper presents a new data fusion multiscale observation product (MOP) for flood emergencies. The MOP was created by integrating multiple sources of contributed open-source data with traditional spaceborne remote sensing imagery to provide a sequence of high spatial and temporal resolution flood inundation maps. The study focuses on the 2015 Memorial Day floods that caused up to US$61 million of damage. The Hydraulic Engineering Center River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) model was used to simulate water surfaces for the northern part of the Trinity River in Dallas, using reservoir surcharge releases and topographic data provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers. A measure of fit assessment is performed on the MOP flood maps with the HEC-RAS simulated flood inundation output to quantify spatial differences. Estimating possible flood inundation using individual datasets that vary spatially and temporally allow an understanding of how much each observational dataset contributes to the overall water estimation. Results show that water surfaces estimated by MOP are comparable with the simulated output for the duration of the flood event. Additionally, contributed data, such as Civil Air Patrol, although they may be geographically sparse, become an important data source when fused with other observation data.

  • Observations of Beach Change and Runup, and the Performance of Empirical Runup Parameterizations during Large Storm Events

    Abstract: Timeseries observations of beach elevation change and wave runup from a tower-mounted stationary lidar assess the skill of 2% runup exceedance (𝑅2%) estimates during four storm events at Duck, NC. The runup parameterization requires the foreshore beach slope, which generally unknown during high energy events. Pre-storm estimates are often used as a proxy. 𝑅2% hindcasts use the observed time-varying beach slope and a static pre-storm beach profile, yielding an 𝑅2% skill of 0.57. The skill drops to −1.0 using seasonal mean beach slopes and reduces after the peak of two storms with the appearance of beach cusps in the swash zone morphology. One storm’s runup is underpredicted by up to 1.0 m at high tides following the storm peak when cusps are present Additional pre- and post-storm mobile lidar surveys for one storm confirm ubiquitous small-scale beach cusps along 8 km of the local shoreline. The results suggest skillful runup estimates are often attainable given the availability of beach information before a storm. The parameterization errors increase when beach cusps develop, highlighting the need to extend standard one-dimensional runup parameterizations to account for two-dimensional effects.

  • Corps of Engineers begins dredging operations near Brownsville, Minnesota

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, is conducting dredging operations at their Above Brownsville Placement site, also known as “Crater Island,” within Pool 8, of the Mississippi River, near Brownsville, Minnesota.

  • MKARNS Nav Notice No. SWL 24-50 Lock 13 Intermittent Delays Update

    The start date for upcoming work at James W. Trimble Lock (No. 13) NM 292.8, as referenced in Nav Notice SWL 24-48, has been modified.