Your state probably isn’t prepared for droughts or floods
A new review in Science of The Total Environment shows just unprepared we are for such floods and droughts—especially as the climate warms. We’re bad at monitoring water resources, we use outdated flood maps and our responses tend to be reactive rather than proactive. To protect ourselves from the water shortages and excesses of the future, we need to rethink how we prepare, the study illustrates.
In the new review, lead author Olga Hart, a doctoral candidate in the lab of Professor Rolf Halden at Arizona State University, looked at drought, water supply and demand, climate change and flooding guidances used by every state. She mapped preparedness for each of those factors and how severe climate change risks are anticipated to be for each state.
