Nationally Known Hurricane Expert to Share Post-Katrina Research
Nationally recognized hurricane impact researcher Robert Young, associate professor
of geosciences at Western Carolina University, will discuss "Atlantic Hurricanes:
Hot New Science, Same Old Policy," when he delivers the Lester W. Strock Lecture in
Geosciences this month. The talk will begin at 7 p.m. Monday, April 10, in Gannett
Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
Over the past 20 years, Young has conducted research on behalf of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the insurance industry through
its Public Entity Risk Institute. He also maintains the Coastal Hazards Information
Clearinghouse, a web-based resource for information about coastal hazards and detailed
hazard maps of most U.S. shorelines.
Following Hurricane Katrina last August, Young and colleague Andrew S. Coburn, of
the Duke University Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, chartered a small
airplane and flew over the Gulf Coast from Pensacola, Fla., to Grand Island, La. Young
said then, "I have been on the scene of every major hurricane to make landfall in
the U.S. since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The damage caused by Hurricane Katrina is by
far the most damage I have ever seen." Young's research was directed at Katrina's
effect on the coastal communities of Alabama and Mississippi. The overflight was part
of his examination of such factors as storm surge, storm over-wash, and patterns of
damage and debris to help determine why some sections of coastline fare better than
others during major storms.
Young has long advocated a new scale that would forecast with greater detail what
happens when storms move on shore. Although the Saffir-Simpson scale (which ranks
the severity of hurricanes as category one to five, depending upon such elements as
barometric pressure, wind speed, and storm surge) describes the strength of a hurricane
in the open ocean, it is not as effective in predicting the effect of a hurricane
on the shore at landfall, according to Young. Instead, he believes that such factors
as coastal geomorphology, storm history, and other characteristics also play a major
role in a particular storm's destructiveness.
Through their work studying Katrina and other hurricanes, Young and his colleagues
hope to convince government officials and policy-makers to re-examine notions of appropriate
places on the coast to build, and in the case of the Gulf Coast, to rebuild.
Young earned a B.S. degree in geology at the College of William and Mary, an M.S.
degree in quaternary studies and geology at the University of Maine, and a Ph.D. degree
in geology at Duke University, where he wrote a dissertation titled "The impact of
sea-level rise on the coastal wetlands in Albemarle, Pamlico, and Carrituck Sounds,
North Carolina: A study of sedimentology, stratigraphy, and wetland dynamics."
Skidmore's Lester W. Strock Lecture was endowed by geochemist Lester Strock, a well-known
authority on Saratoga's mineral springs. Strock, who died in 1982, spent much of his
career in research at MIT and at the Sylvania Electric Co. The First-Year Experience
is a co-sponsor of the Strock Lecture this year.