Minor flooding events, often called nuisance flooding, are floods that result in minimal property damage but may pose a public threat or inconvenience. "This research provides the framework to identify the most beneficial ways in which to lessen the impact of minor flooding in shallow, urbanized coastal lagoons." "We know that flooding is going to get worse, and institutions will have to plan to provide aid to people living in the area," said Alfredo Aretxabaleta, an oceanographer at the United States Geological Survey with no affiliation to the study. According to the study, only two of the 15 minor flooding events that impacted Jamaica Bay in 2020 would have occurred if there hadn't been historical landscape changes in the bay, and only one of the 15 would have occurred without sea level rise. In 2020, 15 of the 62 high-tide events that impacted Jamaica Bay were classified by NOAA as "minor" floods, resulting in flood advisories throughout the bay. They then compared modern flood risks to hypothetical scenarios in which humans did not alter the landscape. Researchers used water level observations and digitized landscape maps that extend back to the 1870s to model the effects of sea level rise and land-use changes, including the extension of Rockaway Peninsula and the dredging and widening of the inlet, on high-tide flooding in the bay. The study was published in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, which features science that advances our understanding of the ocean and its processes. "This forces the community to make infrastructure changes, like putting backflow valves in sewers to prevent water from coming up during flooding events." "Some neighborhoods around Jamaica Bay flood about 60 times per year," said Philip Orton, a physical oceanographer at the Stevens Institute of Technology and corresponding author of the study. As a result, hundreds of thousands of residents experience chronic, damaging floods. Over the past 150 years, landscape changes and sea level rise have increased high-tide levels in the bay by 55 centimeters (1.8 feet). Jamaica Bay is an estuary that lies between Long Island and New York City's Brooklyn and Queens boroughs.
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