Weathering the storm: Exploring flooding in agriculture

Weathering the storm: Exploring flooding in agriculture Christine Sprunger, the Assistant Professor of Soil Health at Michigan State University, aims to understand how the flooding in agriculture has increased with climate change and how farmers can better adapt. Climate change is altering precipitation patterns across the globe. In the upper Midwestern part of the United States, abnormal precipitation events are projected to increase. In recent years, the Midwest has experienced a 37% increase in ‘very heavy precipitation' events (defined as the heaviest 1% of all daily events) according to Karl et al., 2009. Moreover, climate change is shifting when and how these heavy rainfall events are occurring, leading to worse effects of flooding in agriculture.