‘Old floods show Brisbane’s next big wet might be closer than we think‘, The Conversation, 10 January 2017
Historical view of flooding in the Brisbane area. It links to more detailed material done under an Australian Research Council grant. The work involves ‘paleoflood’ records.
This record reveals that flood events like 2011 have occurred at least seven times over the past 1,000 years. We also found a period of high flood activity during the 1700s, which exceeded the size of the historical events of the 1890s and 1974 floods. We can also see clusters of floods within short time periods, such as the cluster in the 1800s, which was highlighted again by the floods in 2011 and 2013. The record indicates that such extreme flood events may occur more frequently than we thought.
The Honest History Book, to be published in April, includes a chapter by Rebecca Jones of the ANU, titled ‘Fire, droughts and flooding rains: Environmental influences on Australian history’, which refers to the flood history of Queensland.