Because of the movement of water above the soil, flooding has the potential result in large scale movement of soil particles through scouring and redeposition of sediments. Materials suspended in floodwaters may also be redeposited through this process. Generally, larger and heavier materials are deposited closer to the stream channel, while smaller and finer materials are deposited further from the channel in still or standing waters. Large amounts of soil can be moved and redeposited in unpredictable ways. Based on very limited data at this time, this type of erosion appears primarily in flood plains and fields near river banks.
Most agricultural fields appear to have been spared from large-scale erosion.
In fact, some of the past flood influences have been part of the inherited properties which soils of the Coastal Plain exhibit today. Soils of the Middle Coastal Plain are some 500,000 years old and have subjected to many hundreds of such floods of this magnitude. The land is not permanently ruined, although in some cases there will be some effects, mostly short lived. Fortunately, very few fields had been freshly tilled prior to September. Most had standing crops or residues from harvested crops that reduced serious erosion normally associated with such heavy rains in the spring or early summer.