St. Louis District Rock Island District St. Paul District

US Army Corps of Engineers

Climate Change Adaptation on the Upper Mississippi River Floodplain

Chuck Theiling USACE Rock Island District 5th National Partners Conference U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Memphis, TN 16 November, 2011

“Unprecedented pretty well sums it up”

Jody Farhat – Chief Mo. R. Water Mgmt. Office (USACE)

• Upper Midwest unusually heavy snow • 300 – 600 percent greater than normal spring rain • 35 – 40 percent more mountain snowpack

2011 Missouri River Floods

St. John’s-New Madrid Floodway

The purpose of the floodway is to lower flood stages upstream and adjacent to the floodway during major flood events. The Floodway is some 35 miles in length and varies from 4 to 12 miles in width. It comprises about 205 square miles of alluvial valley land.

Upper Mississippi River

NWS 90-day Outlook March 7 – June 5, 2011

Near Miss

The flood risk horizon is (has?) changing. It’s time to consider future

options for a resilient UMRS floodplain infrastructure.

Reasons to Adapt Floodplain Management

• Climate change

• Flood risk

• Nutrient enrichment (Gulf hypoxia)

• Food and fiber

• Fuel (corn, cellulose, butanol)

• Security (Navy & Air Force fuel)

Discussion Points

I. UMRS floodplain hydrology and development

II. Past evidence and recent change

III. Floodplain adaptation challenges

IV. Stepping down risk/Residual risk

V. Modeling ecological and economic production in the floodplain – Ecosystem Services

VI. Next steps

Upper Mississippi River System

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Lockport

Brandon

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Marseilles

Starved Rock

Peoria

La Grange

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State Boundaries

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Peoria

Dubuque

La Crosse

St. Louis

Rock Island

Minneapolis

Cape Girardeau

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MINNESOTA

MISSOURI

ILLINOIS

WISCONSIN

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25 Melvin Price

Lockport

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Marseilles

Starved Rock

Peoria

La Grange

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Rea ch

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Reach

Middle

Mississippi

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Illinois

River

Reach

UMRS Floodplain Development

Simulated Flood Inundation Surfaces for Pool 18

Henderson III Levee

and Drainage District

Wetland Reserve

Program removed

pumps in 2008 –

2,600 acres

Similar to The Nature

Conservancy Spunky

Bottoms and Emiquon;

The Wetlands Initiative

Hennepin-Hopper

• Several climate shifts have occurred in the UMRS since glacial retreat (Knox, Nature 1993) .

• Discharge and large floods have generally increased basin-wide since the 1930s (Changnon, 1983; Knox, 1993; Wlosinski, USGS 1999; Zhang and Schilling, 2006).

• There are climate oscillations

• Large floods and extremes may increase during climate transition

UMRS Climate Change

Climate has Varied Since the Last Glaciers

(after Knox, 1985a; 1996a).

the size of moderate and large floods varies a lot.

Magnitude and Frequency of Annual Maximum Floods, Keokuk, IA

(Knox 1996, 2000)

The average flood varies a little between climate episodes,

Levee Building

Discharge is

Increasing (3-Year Moving

Average Discharge)

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Keokuk, IA

St. Louis, MO

The Anomaly of Large Floods and Global Climate Change

“It is therefore intriguing that the accelerated global warming of the 20th century seems to be associated with a trend toward more frequent large floods” (Jim Knox, University of Wisconsin, 2000).

UMRS Floodplain Adaptation Challenges

• Increased flood frequency/risk

• Increased pumping costs

• Uncertainty - Flood stationarity (or not)?

• Levee structural ratings

• FEMA Levee certification

• National Flood Insurance Program rate changes

• Wetland management

Risk Management: Concepts And Guidance By Harold Schott, 1989

Risk Assessment Most civil infrastructure was designed for historic hydrology and development

Be Ready

How bad can it get?

What will happen?

How do we adapt?

Mississippi River and Tributaries Project:

Designed Floodways Systemic Flood

Protection

Missouri River Multi-Purpose Storage Reservoirs

Risk Management: Concepts And Guidance By Harold Schott, 1989

Adaptive Risk Assessment? Most civil infrastructure was designed for historic hydrology and development that has changed, which makes this a risk assessment cycle rather than the clean linear process depicted

Be Ready

How bad can it get?

What will happen?

How do we adapt?

Residual Risk: “When all the Wheels Fall off the Bus”

UMRS Floodway Plan Using Levee Districts

It fits these needs from IPCC:

• Anticipatory (or proactive) adaptation

• Planned adaptation

• Private adaptation

• Public adaptation

Stepping Down Risk on the

Upper Mississippi

It integrates things like:

• Flood risk

• Alternative land use

• Flood insurance

• Public incentives

July 2008

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Modeling Ecosystem Services Ecosystem Production:Economic Production

Flood Damage Prevented

100% 0%

Potential Acres Inundated = Ecosystem Production Function

Relative Flood Damage Prevented = Economic Production Function

Ecosystem Services

Flood Zone

Catastrophe

Maximizing Floodplain Benefits

This farm is producing fish!

This farm is producing crops!

“Ecosystem Services”

Estimating Environmental Benefits Hydro-Geomorphic Methodology

Geomorphology Historic Land Cover Hydrology

Legend Prairie

Cottonwood/Willow

Wet Floodplain Forest

Mesic Floodplain Forest

Non-Aquatic

Isolated Backwater

Connected Backwater

Impounded Area

Tertiary Channel

Secondary Channel

Channel Border

Main Channel

Tributary Channel

Seamless River-Floodplain Potential “Habitat” Scalable: • Geomorphology

• Landform • Elevation/Bathymetry • Soils/Sediment

• Hydrology • Snapshot Aq. Areas • Stage • Inundation • 2-d Flow

• Land Cover • Vegetation/Habitat • Existing • Historic • Modeled

We need to incorporate economics: Crops Transportation Industry/Mining Municipal infrastructure Crop insurance Flood easements Nutrient credits Habitat incentives Recreation

Floodplain Crop Value

Figure 5 Figure 6: .2% Exceedance Probability Flood Inundation and

USGS DEM

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Value of Crops Flooded by Event

Value

Recreation

Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Biomass Corridor

Dr. Shibu Jose, Mizzou Agroforestry

His proposal involves replacing the food crops along the rivers with seven types of plants: • cottonwood and willow trees, • switchgrass and miscanthus grass, • energy cane, and • sweet and biomass sorghum.

Small, advanced rural biorefineries would then collect the biomass, grind up the feedstock, and make pellets or extract sugar out of them. The product would then ship to "hubs," larger plants that ferment the pellets into electricity or biofuel, such as butanol, green diesel and jet fuel.

Reestablishing Floodplain Functions: Watershed Nutrient Exchange

S. Fabius 396,664 acres; 620 sq. miles

N. Fabius 586,111 acres; 916 sq. miles

UMRS 120 million acres; 189,190 sq. miles 12 major tributaries, 30,000 miles of rivers 17 HUC-6; 131 HUC-8; 18,500 HUC-12

Floodplain Hydrologic

Connectivity

~25 miles Ditches

~10 miles Ditches

Hydroponic Biomass Farming

Floating Islands Three Proven Technologies Biohaven® Floating Islands represent the best of wetland science and ecological engineering and combine three proven technologies to create a natural, efficient and innovative method to improve water quality. -Bioremediation: the use of naturally occurring physical, chemical and biological processes to reduce the mass, toxicity, mobility, volume or concentration of a contaminant. -Phytoremediation: the ability of plants to remove pollution from the environment through their dependence upon both macro and micronutrients. -Hydroponics: growing plants in nutrient-filled water without soil. An innovative variation on constructed wetlands, BioHavens® have several advantages over constructed systems.

Algal Turf Scrubbing: Cleaning Surface Waters with Solar Energy

while Producing a Biofuel WALTER H. ADEY, PATRICK C. KANGAS, AND WALTER MULBRY

Bioscience June 2011 / Vol. 61 No. 6

What are the Science and Engineering Issues?

• Levee and controlled overflow integrity and costs

• Watershed nutrient and sediment management

• Crop production/alternatives

What are the knowledge gaps? • Economic valuation of floodplain agriculture, recreation, and

other resources

• Fine scale impacts (Whose farm? How many bass?)

• Potential ecosystem, economic, and regulatory trade-offs

We Have the Capacity to Model Alternative Floodplain Management Scenarios

Multiple Reference Condition Analysis Can help evaluate costs and benefits of alternative floodplain management

High

Terrace

Within District TMDL

Decant Water From Tributary and Mainstem: Watershed TMDL

• Intercept tributary runoff at high flow

• Decant tributary or Mississippi River at low flow

Restore Tributary and Decant Mainstem: Watershed TMDL & Habitat

• Reroute tributary to historic channels

• Decant from Mississippi River

• Farmed wetland/rice

• Native cover habitat incentive

• Aquaculture – fish and crawfish

• Fishing and Hunting Income

Re-Plumbing Floodplains

Next Steps

• University of Iowa Senior Design Feasibility Study

• Ecosystem services valuation

• Economic analysis

• Structured decision analysis for floodplain objectives

• EPA TMDL credits

• Pilot studies

There are plenty of opportunities for innovation in floodplain management. I’m glad to participate in the search for

answers with engineers, scientists, resource managers, farmers, and

regular folks.

Thanks for the chance to talk today!