During the past decade, changing population dynamics in Massachusetts raised concerns about inequitable exposure to floods in historically underserved communities. To examine the interplay between socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and flood risk, we constructed spatially explicit geospatial models to assess the distribution of flood risk from 2010 to 2020 across the 351 municipalities and 4,985 census block groups using the Environmental Justice Index (EJI) developed by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. EJI uses individual categorical variables to describe eight different combinations of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, allowing for assessments through different types of models We found an increasing presence by 69.9% of EJ communities residing in flood zones during the past decade. Specific combinations of socioeconomic indicators, such as minority status linked with limited English proficiency and low-income status, exhibit a statistically significant likelihood of residing in flood zones from 2010 to 2020, relative to non-EJ. Of these socioeconomic indicators, we note a 124.4% increase by area in minority status with limited English proficiency living in flood-prone block groups (3.8 km2 in 2020), a 79.6% increase by area for those with only minority status (92 km2 in 2020), and a 522.6% increase in low-income with limited English proficiency zones by area occurring in the flood-prone block group (0.07 km2 in 2020). Our findings demonstrate that racial and ethnic composition in addition to income inequality are correlated to flood exposure in Massachusetts at both the census block group and at the municipality level. Finer scale analysis revealed additional hotspots of flooding that are obscured at the municipality level. These results not only underscore the potential for harm with increasing intensity and magnitude of flooding in EJ communities but also demonstrate the need for disaster risk reduction to center racial and EJ in flood mitigation efforts. Our study may help inform equitable decision making and equitable adaptation planning under climate change at different spatial scales.

One of the key metrics for the effectiveness of wetland restoration is whether a restored wetland behaves hydrologically like a natural wetland. Restoration is designed to increase the water residence time on the surface of the site in order to capture and process nutrients, mitigate the impact of local flooding and drought, and provide a habitat for wetland species abundance and biodiversity. Quantifying the change in groundwater presence at the wetland’s surface will inform future freshwater wetland restorations across New England. The ability to produce a comprehensive map of the locations of groundwater discharge over a large area has the potential to provide insight into restoration practice, its success, and its effects on individual seeps over time. Identification, mapping, and measurement of groundwater discharge sites have long been a challenge, but new methodologies are developing with the advances in unmanned aerial systems (UAS). This study uses a UAS-mounted thermal infrared camera to map groundwater seeps on a 25-ha (62-acre) site in Plymouth, Massachusetts, before and after it underwent restoration to a freshwater wetland. Using the thermal map, we located and quantified the spatial extent that of groundwater seeps pre-restoration and the changes after restoration. The location and size of these seeps show that existing groundwater seeps remained immobile through restoration, but their surface expression grew, indicating that restoration removed barriers to surface expression and successfully increased residence time. This analysis using a thermal camera-enabled UAS allows for a temporal comparison over large spatial scales and provides insight into restoration impacts to groundwater expression on the surface of post-agricultural wetland sites.

<p>In the Northeastern U.S., the most costly damages from intense storm events were impacts to road-stream crossings.  In steep post-glacial terrain, erosion by floodwater and entrained sediment is the largest destructive force during intense storms, and the most likely driver of major morphological changes to riverbanks and channels.  Steam power analysis is a tool that can successfully quantify floodwater energy that caused damages, however, prediction of which reaches or watersheds may experience future impacts remains uncertain. Downstream, in urban areas, floodwaters increasingly occupy larger geographic extents that spill well beyond traditionally mapped flood and hazard zones. Limiting these maps are critical biases: Often more information is available for coastal and urban areas (missing steeper terrain geomorphic hazard zones), base functional assumptions (that flood risk is dominantly inundation risk from a specific depth of water, ignoring the force of moving water, sediment or erosion), their concentration around the highest-value infrastructure (lower-value and lower-density development or undeveloped areas have little or no map coverage) and how these maps are utilized for regulatory purposes (e.g. mortgage and insurance requirements). Compounding the physical destruction of flooding is the unequal distribution of these impacts on socially vulnerable populations that are least able to recover from them.  We strive to improve the co-generated mapping of social vulnerability and flood risk by (1) utilizing measures of social vulnerability with greater social and geographical insight and nuance, including self-organizing maps (SOM) that cluster overlapping metrics, (2) applying modified flood hazard maps that accurately represent fluvial geomorphic hazards, urban flooding hazards, and climate change considerations, and (3) overlapping these to understand what factors influence current maps and policy practice; what populations and places may be overlooked or under-resourced relative to vulnerability; and use this collective insight to help inform and develop improved map products and policy approaches.  Integration of this information directly with practitioners’ resources allows communities to prioritize and make land-use decisions and flood-response and preparedness decisions that are informed by the specific vulnerabilities of their populations as well as the fluvial geomorphic workings of the larger watershed, and that have powerful local implications.  Outreach and educational programs focused on social vulnerability and fluvial systems for river practitioners and politicians at all levels align communities’ attitudes about flooding and rivers can ultimately result in ecologically sound, socially just, and more flood resilient policies and practices.</p>

EDITORIAL article Front. Earth Sci., 07 March 2023Sec. Hydrosphere Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2023.1165061

GroundwaterEarly View Book Review Groundwater-Surface Water Exchange Christine Hatch, Corresponding Author Christine Hatch cehatch@umass.edu Department of Earth, Geographical and Climate Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 233 Morrill, 611 N. Pleasant St, Amherst, MA, 01003Search for more papers by this author Christine Hatch, Corresponding Author Christine Hatch cehatch@umass.edu Department of Earth, Geographical and Climate Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 233 Morrill, 611 N. Pleasant St, Amherst, MA, 01003Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 September 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwat.13247Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Fluvial geomorphic risks are rarely incorporated into and mitigated by river flood management in the United States. Identifying where such risks exist is difficult and there is much scholarly debate on how best to do it. We incorporate this debate into a stakeholder-driven process to assess its viability in translational fluvial geomorphology. Focusing on Massachusetts, USA we describe a decade-long, stakeholder-driven project that sought to better manage flood risks across the state. We found that even if a diverse group of expert stakeholders agrees on the science, politics complicate the transfer of science into policy in highly participatory settings. Stakeholders agreed that fluvial geomorphic risk mapping should result in a "river corridor" that must be process-based, variable-width, and based on readily available, easily measured data sources. However, without an agreed-upon sense of how to resolve the geographic mismatch between an expansive scientifically defined corridor and one constrained by social and economic practicalities, stakeholders struggled to determine what a fluvial geomorphology-informed river corridor would be used for, and by whom.

Freshwater wetlands are groundwater-dependent ecosystems that require groundwater for saturation, for wetland plants and creatures, for maintenance of wetland soils, and thermal buffering. With worldwide wetland area in decline for decades if not centuries, finding and restoring wetlands provides enormous ecosystem and public benefits, yet so often these projects fail to yield self-sustaining wetland ecosystems. One reason is that restored wetlands are often built in places that are neither wet enough nor possess the underlying geology to sustain them, and they dry out or require continual (expensive!) water inputs. Massachusetts is making the best of a challenging situation for the declining cranberry farming industry: while competition from less expensive land and more productive varietals shifts cranberry production to other locations, everything under historic cranberry farms is ripe for resilient wetland restoration projects. These low-lying water-rich areas are underlain by glacial geology (peats and clays) that are ideal for holding water, they possess historic seed banks of wetland plants and large accumulations of organic and hydric soils, and are currently sought-after by a statewide restoration program, for which these results provide critical information for restoration design, enabling practitioners to maximize the capture and residence time of groundwater inputs to sustain the future wetland. In this paper, we investigate the human legacy of cranberry farming on the surface of a wetland as it has created a unique hydrogeologic unit: the anthropogenic aquifer. Water moves through an anthropogenically constructed aquifer in specific and predictable ways that were engineered to favor a monoculture of cranberry plants on the surface of what once was a peatland. In order to restore this landscape to a functioning freshwater wetland, every property of the anthropogenic aquifer must be reversed. We detail observational, thermal, hydrologic, geologic and isotopic evidence for the location of groundwater inflows to Foothills Preserve in southeastern Massachusetts. The specific properties of the Anthropogenic aquifer, and the location and magnitude of groundwater discharge at this location provide crucial information for practitioners when designing plans for a self-sustaining, resilient restored freshwater wetland on this and future sites.

Hydrological ProcessesVolume 35, Issue 6 e14226 INVITED COMMENTARY Hydraulic conductivity can no longer be considered a fixed property when quantifying flow between groundwater and surface water Donald O. Rosenberry, Corresponding Author Donald O. Rosenberry rosenber@usgs.gov orcid.org/0000-0003-0681-5641 U.S. Geological Survey, Lakewood, Colorado, USA Correspondence Donald O. Rosenberry, U.S. Geological Survey, MS 413, Denver Federal Center, Lakewood, CO 80225, USA. Email: rosenber@usgs.govSearch for more papers by this authorPeter Engesgaard, Peter Engesgaard orcid.org/0000-0002-5925-8757 Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DenmarkSearch for more papers by this authorChristine Hatch, Christine Hatch orcid.org/0000-0002-4996-1617 Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USASearch for more papers by this author Donald O. Rosenberry, Corresponding Author Donald O. Rosenberry rosenber@usgs.gov orcid.org/0000-0003-0681-5641 U.S. Geological Survey, Lakewood, Colorado, USA Correspondence Donald O. Rosenberry, U.S. Geological Survey, MS 413, Denver Federal Center, Lakewood, CO 80225, USA. Email: rosenber@usgs.govSearch for more papers by this authorPeter Engesgaard, Peter Engesgaard orcid.org/0000-0002-5925-8757 Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DenmarkSearch for more papers by this authorChristine Hatch, Christine Hatch orcid.org/0000-0002-4996-1617 Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 May 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14226Citations: 3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume35, Issue6June 2021e14226 This article also appears in:HPToday: Invited Commentaries RelatedInformation