As I write this on June 19, flooding continues throughout much of the Midwest. Our thoughts are with those who are coping with the floods, who are evacuating their homes and businesses and in some cases seeing crops lost to the floodwaters.
No doubt the reasons for this season’s tremendous flooding will be analyzed and debated for months to come. Among those who were there during the flooding in 1993, some are finding it difficult to accept the idea of a second 500-year storm in 15 years.
Changes in land use are commonly cited as reasons for the severity of the floods: more development and greater amounts of impervious surface, sedimentation of the rivers, loss of wetland areas, building in the floodplains. Other speculations recently in the media have to do with agricultural activities, such as the drainage tiling on agricultural lands over the decades, or farming closer to streams without enough of a natural buffer to help slow the water. Others cite the crops themselves: more shallow-rooted plants like corn and soybeans whose root systems don’t hold as much water as native prairie grasses or even as much as other, more varied crops.
Still others maintain that it’s the sheer amount of rain that’s to blame—whether they attribute it to normal cyclical weather patterns or to global warming—more than land use patterns.
What do you think? Is the flooding and the damage it’s causing more a manmade phenomenon or an inevitable natural one?