Zahner Lecture 6 - Understanding Helene as a Geologic Event in Southern Appalachia

Featured Speaker
Philip S. Prince, Ph.D., Project Geologist, Appalachian Landslide Consultants, PLLC, Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences

Date: Thursday, July 24th
Time: 6pm – 7pm
Cost: FREE

Sponsored by Ruthie & Berry Edwards.

Helene’s impacts on rivers and slopes in the southern Appalachians exceeded all recorded storms, establishing a new benchmark for flooding and landsliding from Haywood County to southwest Virginia. The storm’s severity resulted from a specific combination of weather movement and the unique southern Appalachian topography, whose southeast-facing slopes are perfectly oriented to focus impacts of weather systems from the Gulf. This talk will place the Helene event in a geologic and topographic context, focusing on what the storm actually did to the landscape and river channels from the perspective of fieldwork and remote sensing. LiDAR imagery and the results of past storms will shed some light on just how long the scars of Helene may last and offer some insight into just how important similar storms may have been in shaping the mountains into what we see today.

Brought to you by Highlands Biological Foundation.

You may also like the following events from Highlands Nature Center:

• This Thursday, 12th June, 06:00 pm, Zahner Lecture 1 - Healthy Land, Healthy People: Centering Indigenous Voices in Conservation in Highlands
• Next Tuesday, 17th June, 08:00 pm, What Bat is That? in Highlands
• Next Wednesday, 18th June, 03:00 pm, Nature Center Drawing Club in Highlands

Also check out other Sports events in Highlands.