WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 —  Smithsonian researcher Mary Bourke, known as “Mary, Mother of Floods,” scours the world’s deserts for clues to how often catastrophic floods like those in North Carolina may occur. Every 100 years? Every 500 years? Her findings of monumental floods in the past could mean trouble for the future, say scientists.

BOURKE SAID she is trying to find out where floods in North Carolina fit into the scale of their potential.   “Are they new phenomenon? Have they occurred in the past? Will they occur in the future? These are the questions that we’re trying to answer,” she said.

The desert is ideal for such research because the exposed rock reveals where flood sediments were deposited 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, even before the dawn of civilization. And desert dunes may be evidence of prehistoric flood erosion.

Already, Burke has one dramatic conclusion: “The floods that we’re experiencing today in some regions, that we have data for, that people have seen, experienced and we’ve measured in terms of rainfall and the flow through rivers, are not the biggest floods that have happened. The data that we found (in central Australia) indicates that much larger floods have happened in the past,” she said.

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