Thomas Suro

Biography

Thomas Suro is a hydrologist with the USGS New Jersey Water Science Center. He has over 20 years experience working on a wide variety of projects mostly in the areas of SW hydrology and hydraulics. Project areas of interest include surface-water hydraulics engineering and watershed modeling, flood frequency analysis of peak flows and surface-water statistics, flood hydrology, inundation mapping, low-flow hydrology, and estimating and modeling daily streamflow at ungaged sites to assist in water management and the development of streamflow standards to protect our environment. He is the Surface-Water Specialist for the New Jersey Water Science Center and is the Project Chief for the Hurricane Sandy scientific investigation report which will analyze and document the coastal flooding impact on New Jersey. Tom is a registered Professional Hydrologist (PH) and a Certified Flood Plain Manager (CFM).   Thomas Suro is a hydrologist with the USGS NJWSC. He has over 20 years experience working on a wide variety of projects mostly in the areas of SW hydrology and hydraulics. Project areas of interest include surface-water hydraulics engineering and watershed modeling, flood frequency analysis of peak flows and surface-water statistics, flood hydrology, inundation mapping, low-flow hydrology, and estimating and modeling daily streamflow at ungaged sites to assist in water management and the development of streamflow standards to protect our environment. He is the Surface-Water Specialist for the New Jersey Water Science Center. Tom is a registered Professional Hydrologist (PH) and a Certified Flood Plain Manager (CFM). He has a B.S. in engineering from Drexel University and is an active member of the Delaware River Basin Commission’s Flood Advisory Committee.  He is also currently the Project Chief for the Hurricane Sandy scientific investigation project which will analyze and document the flooding from Hurricane Sandy along the coast of New Jersey. Tom is also working on a report to summarize the major flooding along the East Coast of the United States during 2011. He previously held positions of Assistant Chief of the Hydraulic Surveillance and Investigations section of the USGS office in Troy, NY, and the Project Chief for the Flood Investigations project, funded in cooperation with NYS Dept. of Transportation, in New York. He also has a report prepared in cooperation with NYS Dept. of Transportation to document the maximum known stage and discharge of streams in New York undergoing review for publication. He has worked on projects to derive regression equations to estimate a daily streamflow hydrograph at ungaged sites in New York to assist in developing streamflow standards to protect aquatic habitats and natural ecosystems,  completed a pilot study that computed updated low flow statistics for several USGS streamgages and investigated the current low-flow streamgage network in New York, managed a project to flood harden several USGS streamgages in the Delaware River basin, and served as project chief for the projects completed in cooperation with FEMA and NYS-DOT to document the floods of April 2005 along the Neversink River and the Esopus Creek, and the flood of June 2006 in the Mohawk, Delaware and Susquehanna River basins in New York. He published reports documenting the effects of these floods and worked as one of the crew chiefs on the project to document the floods of Sept. 18-19, 2004 in the Upper Delaware River Basin of NY, and Sept. 15-16, 1999 in southeastern New York. He has completed many flood surveys to compute a peak flood discharge by indirect methods, and worked on various other projects such as the Hudson River Salt-Front project (a project to model the location of the saltwater/freshwater junction in the Hudson River), a hydraulic model to compute flow thru several large tainter gates and over a main spillway on the Hudson River. He pioneered the use of an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) to collect streamflow data at streamgages in eastern New York, and managed the installation and calibration of an acoustic doppler velocity meter on the Hudson River to compute real-time discharge. During the 1990s he managed the project to document the flooding from the Great Nor’easter of 1992 along the New Jersey coast and published a report summarizing the results. He worked on a flood warning project to provide realtime rainfall and river level data in northern New Jersey to federal, state and local officials for forecasting and public safety. In addition, he has worked on several different projects including water quality and groundwater data collection, groundwater aquifer tests, and hydraulic modeling of lake outflows through automatic gates. He has also worked on collecting low-flow surface-water data for various projects over the years.

Research Interest

droughts floods runoff saltwater intrusion surface water (non-marine)