Determining the role of global agricultural systems in mitigating flood events

Flood-related disasters are distinctively highly disruptive events, causing serious damage worldwide. A recent report by the European Commission likewise highlighted the inadequacy of flood protection measures for agricultural systems across all member states. Counter-intuitively, the report also emphasized that agricultural systems do not contribute noticeably to flood prevention downstream.

Agricultural systems can mitigate downstream flooding through reduction in surface runoff or by temporarily storing floodwater, possibly at the expense of agricultural production. Relying entirely on hard flood protection measures, such as levees and dams, to mitigate future flood damage is problematic, particularly for developing nations where such measures may be financially prohibitive, leaving them vulnerable to large residual flood risk (see Fig. 1).

This research project elucidates the role of global agricultural systems for mitigating current and future flood events through model simulations. In the long term, our aim is to rigorously integrate the complex interplay between agricultural systems, biodiversity, and flooding into a complete framework applicable at the continental and global scales.