Enrica Viparelli
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Earth & Environmental Science
When rivers flood, they spread sand and mud across their floodplains. That sediment shapes the landscape and carries nutrients and contaminants.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
- Topics
floodplain sedimentation
sediment transport
fluvial geomorphology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Oct 2026
What they work on
- Measure how sedimentation rates and grain sizes vary across the Congaree National Park floodplain after the Hurricane Helene flood, using field sediment sampling.
- Link floodplain deposit patterns to main-channel flow conditions by combining floodplain samples with U.S. Geological Survey stream-gage data.
- Determine how floodplain channels and connected depressions spread water, riverbed sand and fine mud into the floodplain interior, to test simple sedimentation models.
More about the research
Yet scientists still struggle to predict where it settles. One reason is that water flowing over uneven ground is hard to model. Another is that there is no solid framework for how fine silt and clay move, settle and erode. Floodplain models usually treat flow simply, as either above or below the channel's bank-full level. They also describe sediment as just two sizes: sand from the riverbed and fine "wash load" mud. Real floodplains are messier. They have uneven natural levees, complex terrain, and networks of side channels and depressions that carry water deep into the floodplain.
Why it matters
Knowing where a major flood leaves sand and mud helps estimate how much fine sediment and nutrients move across floodplains. Ecosystem managers need these numbers. The new dataset could also improve models of how particles and contaminants spread during floods. This could inform management of forested river floodplains such as Congaree National Park.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Czuba
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether fine sediment accumulation in streambeds can be predicted from bankfull flow conditions across a wide range of U.S. landscapes, by analyzing a U.S. EPA stream dataset.
Samuel Munoz
Northeastern University, MA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Establish a long-term floodplain observatory, using environmental sensors and sediment cores, to monitor how floods deposit sediment along a lowland river.
Katharine Huntington
University of Washington, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine the source, depositional age and grain-size distribution of megaflood deposits along the Yarlung-Siang-Brahmaputra river system in the eastern Himalaya, using field observations and laboratory analytical tools.
The school
University of South Carolina-Columbia: 22 labs on PI Pages, $277M a year on research, 425 research doctorates a year.
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