(Press-News.org)
A new study from UNC-Chapel Hill reveals that repetitive flooding in North Carolina is far more common and more widespread than previously recognized, with over 20,000 buildings flooding multiple times between 1996 and 2020. The study, which mapped 78 flood events across roughly three-quarters of the state, fills a major gap in understanding the full impacts of flooding on communities well beyond the state’s coastal floodplains.
Until now, detailed flood maps have existed for only a handful of past events. The research team created high-resolution maps for more than 70 previously unmapped floods, linking them to the exact locations of buildings. Their findings show that over 90,000 buildings flooded in at least one event, with 43% of them located outside of FEMA’s designated 100-year floodplains, areas officially recognized as high-risk.
“We found that flooding in North Carolina, especially repetitive flooding, is more widespread and frequent than we previously knew, and it is often happening outside of places we currently consider as high-risk,” said Helena Garcia, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program at UNC-Chapel Hill.
While previous studies and government data have focused on large, headline-grabbing storms like Hurricane Florence or only on insured properties, this study breaks new ground by capturing a much broader and more nuanced view. FEMA’s records count roughly 13,000 repetitively flooded properties in the entire state since the 1970s. In contrast, the Carolina team identified more than 20,000 repeatedly flooded buildings from just 1996 to 2020 in a portion of the state where many of these buildings were not covered by flood insurance, meaning they would not have been tracked by insurance records at all.
“We’ve always known flooding is a threat to NC, but the focus has been on only the biggest events. With this study, we’re painting a much more complete picture. There are lots of floods that go under the radar and don’t make the headlines, but they are just as damaging and disruptive to the families that are impacted,” said Antonia Sebastian, lead advisor and assistant professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program and Department of Earth, Marine, and Environmental Sciences.
The implications of the research are both practical and urgent. By identifying where repetitive flooding has already occurred, the data can help guide smarter, more equitable resilience investments, whether that means strengthening infrastructure, updating emergency planning, or offering better support to affected communities.
“These findings can help guide more effective resilience investments by identifying communities that have been hit hard by flooding but may be currently overlooked by government programs and policies,” said Miyuki Hino, co-author and assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program.
Their work is already laying the groundwork for further studies on how flooding affects residents over time, from financial strain to health outcomes to migration patterns.
With North Carolina developing a statewide flood resilience strategy, the researchers hope this comprehensive dataset will be used to direct resources where they’re needed most, especially in the often-overlooked areas that flood repeatedly but lack visibility or federal aid.
The study is available online in the journal Earth’s Future at: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EF006026
END
People who view the world as a savage social jungle are more likely to admire antagonistic leaders, praising their competence, while those who see the social world as cooperative and benign might just call those leaders clueless, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Why do some people see antagonistic behavior in leaders – especially when it’s particularly mean or forceful or disagreeable – as a sign of incompetence, while others view it as a mark of savvy leadership?” said Christine Nguyen, a doctoral student at Columbia ...
New research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science shows that awareness of economic disparity affects happiness, meaning, harmony and spiritual well-being.
A comprehensive new study examining data from 71 countries suggests that perceiving high levels of economic inequality significantly undermines individual well-being across multiple dimensions of human flourishing. The research provides crucial insights into how awareness of economic disparity affects not just happiness, but also people's sense of meaning, harmony, and spirituality.
Led by researcher ...
While humans can escape the heat by seeking shade or shedding layers, plants remain rooted in place. So how do they survive extreme heat? It’s a question many have wondered—and now, science has an answer.
A research team led by Dr. Hye sun Cho at the Plant Systems Engineering Research Center of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology(KRIBB) has uncovered, for the first time at the molecular level, the mechanism by which plants adapt and survive under heat stress. The breakthrough is expected to greatly ...
With intensifying global warming and climate change, drought has become a major threat to global agriculture, impacting crop yields and food security. To survive such adverse events, plants have evolved several strategies. One such strategy to counteract water scarcity is ‘stomatal closure,’ where stomata—the tiny pores on leaf surfaces responsible for gaseous exchange—close to limit water loss. This process is regulated by the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA), which plays a crucial ...
Magnetic micropillar arrays consist of tiny, vertical pin-shaped structures, arranged in a grid-like pattern. These micropillars can change their shape to a pre-programmed geometry when exposed to a magnetic field. They are made from magnetically responsive composites, comprising rubbery polymers like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) embedded with magnetic particles. These composites can change their shape and recover repeatedly without any deterioration.
Unfortunately, conventional magnetic micropillar arrays can only hold their changed shape temporarily while the magnetic field is being applied. Previous studies have explored various approaches to address this issue, including water-soluble ...
REDWOOD CITY, CA — July 14, 2025 — A landmark study published in Cell has unveiled a first-of-a-kind optogenetic screening platform, developed by scientists at Integrated Biosciences, a biotechnology company integrating optogenetics, chemistry and AI to discover small molecule therapeutics for age-related diseases. The new peer-reviewed publication demonstrates the platform’s capabilities by applying it to the integrated stress response (ISR), a key aging- and disease-associated signaling pathway implicated in neurodegeneration, cancer and viral infection.
In the Cell study, Integrated Biosciences scientists used optogenetic control to selectively activate the ...
Volatile air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and ozone are only monitored loosely in the EU. Separate devices are used for each individual pollutant, and real-time monitoring is not possible. Birgitta Schultze-Bernhardt from the Institute of Experimental Physics at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) would like to simplify and significantly improve these measurements. In her MULTI TRACE research project, she is developing a portable device that can determine the concentration of several gaseous pollutants in ambient air with the utmost accuracy ...
Most genes are ancient and shared across species. But a small subset of genes are relative newcomers, spontaneously emerging from stretches of DNA that once encoded nothing at all.
Now, after nearly a decade of charting these genes in fruit flies, researchers have discovered how these de novo genes are regulated. In complementary studies, in Nature Ecology & Evolution and PNAS, the team showed how transcription factors and genomic neighbors switch these genes on and integrate them into cellular networks—the first studies to identify these master regulators. Together, the findings shed light on how new genes become ...
KANSAS CITY, MO — July 14, 2025 — While humans can regularly replace certain cells, like those in our blood and gut, we cannot naturally regrow most other parts of the body. For example, when the tiny sensory hair cells in our inner ears are damaged, the result is often permanent hearing loss, deafness, or balance problems. In contrast, animals like fish, frogs, and chicks regenerate sensory hair cells effortlessly.
Now, scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified how two distinct genes guide the regeneration of sensory cells in zebrafish. The discovery improves our understanding of how regeneration works in zebrafish and may guide future studies ...
The cleanup of air pollution in East Asia has accelerated global warming, a new study published today (Monday, 14 July) in the journal Communications Earth and Environment has found.
Global warming, driven primarily by emissions of greenhouse gases, has been accelerating for the past 15 years, leading to record-breaking surface temperatures. Over the same period, countries in East Asia have made strong efforts to clean up air pollution, which is important for public health. The largest air pollution clean-up has been made ...
