Iowa flooding may have been worsened by man

[XemaSab]

As the Cedar River rose higher and higher, and as he stacked sandbags along the levee protecting downtown Cedar Falls, Kamyar Enshayan, a college professor and City Council member, kept asking himself the same question: "What is going on?"

The river would eventually rise 6 feet higher than any flood on record. Farther downstream, in Cedar Rapids, the river would break the record by more than 11 feet.

Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically re-engineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tall grass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Floodplains have been filled and developed.

"We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions," he said. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/19/MNGJ11BD2C.DTL

[phantom power]

1. Geologists have been predicting this for decades.

Channeling an entire continental drainage basin with levies only works for so long. Geologically speaking, not very long at all.

[bluedawg12]

7. We continue to screw around with the planet cuting and burning

with impunity.

Yeah, it would be hard " to prove" to people who believe we have unlimited dominion over the earth. For the rest of us...it makes sense.


Credit NASA
Extensive deforestation and fragmentation are visible in this satellite image, acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on August 24, 2000, of the state of Rondonia, Brazil, along the Jiparaná River. Tropical rainforest appears bright red, while pale red and brown areas represent cleared land. Black and gray areas have probably been recently burned. The Jiparaná River appears blue. (Image courtesy of NASA and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)

[Xipe Totec]

2. Whoever it was, find him and make him clean it up! nt

[bluedawg12]

3. Deforestation too. each forest is a little lake and when we cut trees

we loose water storage and invite flooding.

The article brings out all the ways we meddle with the natural balance- even when it appears on the surface we are talking about rurual areas and not cities.

[Mountainman]

4. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature" say what?

We need tougher county zoning to protect wetlands and natural flood protection. How are you going to put it all back? Maybe those who lost everything can file a class action law suit against agriculture. No they wouldn't do either thing. They want less government and more tort reform! Fools!

The again is conservative ideology in action! Almost all of agriculture supports the repukes.

[bluedawg12]

8. They still take pride in "voting their values" against

rational self interest or the good of the planet.

Short term greed and cliniging to moralism--now let's all eat their values and let them sell their values on the open market.

[Ian David]

5. Is this according to, "Duh!" Magazine, or "The Obvious Pages"? n/t

[kestrel91316]

6. Yep. Iowa doesn't absorb rainfall much better than a paved parking lot these days.

Nor does anyplace else in the US.

Wetland and riparian restoration should be a NATIONAL EMERGENCY PRIORITY. And not fighting a senseless war of foreign aggression and occupation.

We have lost our minds. And our way.