A nationwide analysis of community-level floodplain development found that over two-million acres of floodplain were developed over the past two decades across the United States, with roughly half of all new floodplain housing built in Florida.
A nationwide analysis of community-level floodplain development found that over two-million acres of floodplain were developed over the past two decades across the United States, with roughly half of all new floodplain housing built in Florida.
These findings from scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science provide new information on patterns of floodplain development that pose a potential risk to people and communities in regions like the Southeastern U.S. that are especially prone to flooding.
In the new study, researchers combined geospatial land use, impervious surface, and housing data with information from digitized regulatory floodplain maps to measure new floodplain development for communities across the U.S. The analysis, published in the journal Earth’s Future, found that over 840,000 new residential properties were built in the floodplain across the U.S. with about 398,000 of those built in Florida, which represents 21 percent of all new housing built in the state and the highest total of any U.S. state.
“Given the size of floodplains and amount of new overall housing growth, those figures are actually much less than we would expect,” said the study’s lead author Armen Agopian, a Ph.D. student in the Abess graduate program at the Rosenstiel School.
Read more at University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science
