Journal article
Agricultural flood vulnerability assessment and risk quantification in Iowa
The Science of the total environment, Vol.826, pp.154165-154165
02/26/2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154165
PMID: 35231508
Abstract
Agricultural lands are often impacted by flooding, which results in economic losses and causes food insecurity across the world. Due to the world's growing population, land-use alteration is frequently practiced meeting global demand. However, land-use changes combined with climate change have resulted in extreme hydrological changes (i.e., flooding and drought) in many areas. The state of Iowa has experienced several flooding events over the last couple of decades (e.g., 1993, 2008, 2014, 2016, 2019). Also, agribusiness is conducted across 85% of the state. In this research, we present a comprehensive assessment for agricultural flood risk in the state of Iowa utilizing most up-to-date flood inundation maps and crop layer raster datasets. The study analyzes the seasonal variation of the statewide agricultural flood risk by focusing on corn, soybean, and alfalfa crops. The results show that over $230 million average annualized losses estimated at statewide considering studied crop types. The crop frequency layers and corn suitability rating datasets are investigated to reveal regions with lower or higher productivity ratings. The study founds nearly half a million acres of cropland is under 2-year return period flood zone. Additionally, a data-driven flood model, Height Above the Nearest Drainage (HAND), is used to analyze performance against the FEMA maps. We found that the HAND flood maps performed with the correlation of 0.93 and 0.94 for 100-year and 500-year flood events regarding to the FEMA maps.
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•The study provides a comprehensive agricultural flood risk for the State of Iowa.•Average annualized losses are visualized for each HUC-8 watershed.•Crop rotation practices have been proven to have a negligible impact on flood losses.•The research shares potential mitigation sites in the most vulnerable regions which inaugurates future studies for mitigation analysis.•Terrain-based flood mapping products are found to be well performed with reference to the FEMA inundation maps.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Agricultural flood vulnerability assessment and risk quantification in Iowa
- Creators
- Enes Yildirim - University of IowaIbrahim Demir - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The Science of the total environment, Vol.826, pp.154165-154165
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154165
- PMID
- 35231508
- NLM abbreviation
- Sci Total Environ
- ISSN
- 0048-9697
- eISSN
- 1879-1026
- Publisher
- Elsevier B.V
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/26/2022
- Academic Unit
- Electrical and Computer Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; IIHR--Hydroscience and Engineering; Injury Prevention Research Center
- Record Identifier
- 9984224960102771
Metrics
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