Chesley Bonestell, “The Exploration of Mars” (1953), oil on board, 143/8 x 28 inches, gift of William Estler, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Reproduced courtesy of Bonestell LLC.

Follow Nature’s Lessons on Floods

September 5, 2017

 

9/5/17 – As floodwaters still plague Houston after Hurricane Harvey, two water-resource specialists say that a report on the Great Flood of 1993 in the upper Midwest showed policy makers how to mitigate or prevent severe flooding, but the advice went largely unheeded. In Issues, another pair of experts commenting five years after that report pointed out a host of actions still needed—many of them missing even today—and stressed that the key would be adopting a more informed kind of flood management that involves working with the forces of nature instead of simply trying to eliminate them.