How can flooding help farmers

Clinical Infectious Diseases Health risks of flood disasters. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.

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Necessary Necessary. Land owners face a number of economic challenges when recovering from a flood. Recovery is hard work but not an impossible task. Farmers need an extra dose of patience and persistence in these times. The first step is to clean up the land by removing debris and draining water from the fields. Crops must also be evaluated for damage and disease and then separated from other plants that are healthy. To reverse nitrogen loss, estimate the amount of loss and then apply fertilizers or plant crops such as legumes.

Diseases may also be managed with fungicides but this can also increase production costs. We created a curriculum to facilitate learning and discussion of this issue. The content is based on interviews we did with floodplain stakeholders.

Lessons look at strategies that can help protect farms, downstream communities, and river ecosystems from floods Table 1. This teaching tool was designed for use by educators. Teaching guides and a slide show support the interactive lessons and role-playing scenarios. The focus is on socio-environmental tradeoffs. Participants need to consider complex social, economic, political, and environmental aspects to address the issue.

The goal is to balance ecosystem conservation, agricultural production, and community needs. To date, the curriculum has been used in several group settings.

Materials helped guide roundtable discussions between farmers and RiverSmart. RiverSmart is a research group that has studied resilience to river flooding, farming vulnerability, and adaptation strategies. The curriculum was also used to help students learn about and develop sustainable river governance practices in an era of climate change. Farming the Floodplain: Trade-offs and Opportunities.

Climate change will alter rainfall patterns in New England in the coming decades. Research brief Classroom materials Flood management tradeoffs Floodplain management strategies in agricultural areas can take many forms. Interviews with floodplain stakeholders In , we interviewed 36 residents and farmers in the Deerfield River watershed in western Massachusetts.