Agricultural flood vulnerability assessment and risk quantification in Iowa

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.

Keywords: Agricultural vulnerability; Flood risk assessment; Flood risk quantification; Flood vulnerability; Floods.