IMPACTS OF HURRICANE FLORENCE AND MICHAEL ON THE BLACK CREEK AQUIFER AS RECORDED BY THE SOUTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA GROUNDWATER MONITORING NETWORK

The Southeastern North Carolina Groundwater Monitoring Network is a series of monitoring wells in Robeson County, North Carolina that are overseen by faculty and students from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and funded by Robeson County. The Black Creek aquifer is a confined aquifer that is the primary source for drinking water within the region. Pressure transducers within monitoring wells across the county monitor the groundwater use in the Black Creek Aquifer and this data is publicly accessible to water users in the region. The network of transducers were placed in 2018 prior to two large hurricanes that severely impacted the region, hurricanes Hurricanes Florence and Michael. Both of these storms caused significant flooding in the region where over 8 trillion gallons of water were dropped on the Carolinas in a short time. Our transducers obtained a very high resolution record of these events and how the potentiometric surface in the region responded to the storms. The data from the wells are interpreted to show the heterogeneity within the aquifer, how the aquifer responds to these large changes of barometric pressure, and that the confined aquifer is more interconnected to surficial aquifers than originally thought. As we continue to study the data from the network we are hoping that can have a better understanding of how large storm events impact aquifers and how we should manage this resource in the region.