ABSTRACT
The Patuxent River Basin in Maryland is a rewarding setting for fluvial studies. The river basin is ideal for knowing about the impacts of construction and flooding from the Piedmont stream sources through the Maryland Coastal Plain to the river’s estuary on the Chesapeake Bay. It is also useful for comparing the effects of catastrophic flooding and suburban development on a single watershed by using data on subwatersheds with different landuses within the larger one. During the Agnes flood, an estimated 3.9 × 106 m3 of sediment entered the estuary, increasing the depth of bottom deposits there by 4 cm. This increment is hardly significant compared to deposits 1.5 to 3.0 m deep that accumulated between 1859 and 1944 on the estuary bed. Although the major floods caused severe channel damages on a local and temporary scale, natural channels quickly recovered.
