Flood Management and Capturing the Deluge
Climate change is intensifying both droughts and floods. The frontier is managing them together — capturing floodwater to recharge depleted aquifers.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, driving heavier downpours and bigger floods even in drought-prone regions. The same places that run dry for years can be inundated in a single atmospheric-river event.
Rather than rushing floodwater to the sea, water managers increasingly try to capture it. Flood-managed aquifer recharge (Flood-MAR) deliberately spreads high flows onto fields and basins to refill groundwater, turning a hazard into a supply.
California has made Flood-MAR a centerpiece of its groundwater strategy, linking flood control, drought resilience, and aquifer recovery into a single approach.
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