Impact of levee breaches, flooding, and land scouring on soil productivity

Excerpt

Flooding of agricultural lands after a natural or human-induced levee breach can have large and persistent effects on soils, crop productivity, and water quality, with negative economic, social, and ecological consequences. Many US water management strategies associated with levee-protected agricultural systems are dominated by policies that focus on engineered solutions designed to minimize short-term risk of flooding and breaching while overlooking resilience of the agroecosystem as a whole (Morton and Olson 2014; Park et al. 2013). A federal damage assessment of the effects of levee breaches and flooding on public and agricultural lands is needed each time a levee fails. Most federal damage assessments only include the levee itself and the adjacent crater lakes, gullies, and sand deltaic deposits but not the remaining flooded areas. Land scouring, sediment deposition in drainage and road ditches, and soil productivity loss are the most severe damages to soils on agricultural lands.

Levee breaches on the Mississippi River in the US interior have occurred since the Great Flood of 1927 (Barry 1997). The Flood of 2011 (Camillo 2012) on the Mississippi River well illustrates the impacts of flooding and levee breaching on agricultural soil conditions and productivity. The area of study for this paper…