Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., Feb. 18) -- In May 2011, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used explosives to breach a levee south of Cairo, Ill., diverting the rising waters of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to prevent flooding in the town, about 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland were inundated. It was the largest flood of the lower Mississippi ever recorded, and researchers from the U. of I. took advantage of the occurrence to study the damage. Their results, published this week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, demonstrate that landscape vulnerabilities can be mapped ahead of time to help communities prepare for extreme flooding. “There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the characteristics of extreme rainfall under climate change are going to be different,” says Praveen Kumar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Illinois and project leader on the study. Also: Nature World News (Feb. 18), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., Feb. 18), ScienceBlog (Feb. 18).
Related story: Drovers Cattle Network (Feb. 18) -- According to a recent University of Illinois study, the Cache River Basin’s agricultural lands dodged a bullet due to the timing of the great flood of April 2011 when the Ohio River approached the record high of 332.2 feet above sea level. The floodwaters eventually drained back into the Ohio River and upper Mississippi River ultimately leaving approximately 1,000 acres of agricultural land flooded from a backup in the middle and lower Cache River Valley, which flooded the adjacent forest-covered alluvial soils and the slightly higher cultivated soils. Also: Pork Magazine (Feb. 18).