Abstract
AbstractUnder future climate predictions, the incidence of coastal flooding is set to rise. Many coastal regions at risk, such as those surrounding the North Sea, comprise large areas of low‐lying and productive agricultural land. Flood risk assessments typically emphasise the economic consequences of coastal flooding on urban areas and national infrastructure. Impacts on agricultural land have seen less attention, and considerations tend to omit the long‐term effects of soil salinity. The aim of this study is to develop a universal framework to evaluate the economic impact of coastal flooding to agriculture. We incorporated existing flood models, satellite acquired crop data, soil salinity, and crop sensitivity to give a novel and detailed assessment of salt damage to agricultural productivity over time. We focussed our case‐study on low‐lying, highly productive agricultural land with a history of flooding in Lincolnshire, UK. The potential impact of agricultural flood damage varied across our study region. Assuming typical cropping does not change postflood financial losses range from £1,366/ha to £5,526/ha per inundation, these losses would be reduced by between 35% up to 85% in the likely event that an alternative, more salt‐tolerant, cropping, regime is implemented postflood. These losses are substantially higher than loses calculated on the same areas using established flood risk assessment framework conventionally used for freshwater flood assessments, with differences attributed to our longer term salt damage projections impacting over several years. This suggests flood protection policy needs to consider local and long‐term impacts of flooding on agricultural land.
Highlights
Coastal flooding has devastating consequences for millions of people, properties, and land worldwide (Nicholls, 2004; Jongman et al 2012)
Large proportions of the most productive agricultural land occupy low-lying, reclaimed coastal regions. These areas are susceptible to coastal flooding climate scenarios (Lowe & Gregory, 2005; Spencer et al 2015), but the risk has manifested in recent history; in particular, the North Sea storm surges of 1953, 1978, and 2013 resulted in widespread farmland inundation and crop losses along the east coast of England and low-lying coastal regions including the Netherlands (Steers et al 1979; Baxter, 2005; Spencer et al, 2015)
As a method of yield sensitivity analysis we present output values given from the range of high, average and low yielding scenarios given in Nix for each breach, and assumed crops in the Land Cover Plus ‘other’ category were brassica vegetables reflecting local practice (Rural Payments Agency, 2016)
Summary
Coastal flooding has devastating consequences for millions of people, properties, and land worldwide (Nicholls, 2004; Jongman et al 2012). Large proportions of the most productive agricultural land occupy low-lying, reclaimed coastal regions These areas are susceptible to coastal flooding climate scenarios (Lowe & Gregory, 2005; Spencer et al 2015), but the risk has manifested in recent history; in particular, the North Sea storm surges of 1953, 1978, and 2013 resulted in widespread farmland inundation and crop losses along the east coast of England and low-lying coastal regions including the Netherlands (Steers et al 1979; Baxter, 2005; Spencer et al, 2015). Soil salinization is one of the major contributors to worldwide soil degradation (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2015; United Nations, 2017), it has been of little historic concern in temperate maritime climates In these regions, through the medium term (1 to 7 years), salts are flushed through the soil profile by relatively high rainfall and low evaporation rates (Abrol et al 1988). We discuss the implications of the novel framework, comparing with establish assessments and comment on the financial implications of changes in postflood management, and the significance of the case-study site
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