Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals. Irrigation helps to grow agricultural crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of less than average rainfall. Irrigation also has other uses in crop production, including frost protection, suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. In contrast, agriculture that relies only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming.
A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrology and are of significant concern in agriculture, civil engineering and public health.
The hydrosphere is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet or natural satellite. Although the Earth's hydrosphere has been around for longer than 4 billion years, it continues to change in size. This is caused by seafloor spreading and continental drift, which rearranges the land and ocean.
Lake Travis is a reservoir on the Colorado River in central Texas in the United States. The reservoir was formed in 1942 by the construction of Mansfield Dam on the western edge of Austin, Texas by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), and was built specifically to contain floodwaters in a flash-flood prone region. During its construction, after a severe flood in July 1938, the height of the dam was raised to add storage capacity for floodwaters.
The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body, established in 1995 and sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), with responsibilities relating to the protection and enhancement of the environment in England.
Macquarie River a watercourse that is part of the Macquarie–Barwon catchment within the Murray–Darling basin, is one of the main inland rivers in New South Wales, Australia.
Inundation is both the act of intentionally flooding land that would otherwise remain dry, for military, agricultural, or river-management purposes, and the result of such an act.
The Assabet River is a small river about 20 miles (30 km) west of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The river is 34.4 miles (55.4 km) long. OARS: the Organization for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers, headquartered in West Concord, Massachusetts, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, protection, and enhancement of the natural and recreational features of these three rivers and their watershed. The Assabet and Sudbury Rivers merge in Concord to become the Concord River.
The Mill River is a 13.5-mile-long (21.7 km) tributary of the Connecticut River arising in the western hilltowns of Hampshire County, Massachusetts. It is notable for dropping in elevation, along with its West Branch, more than 700 feet (210 m) over 15 miles (24 km).
Kainakary is a village in Kuttanad Taluk in Alappuzha District of the Indian state of Kerala.
Feniton is a village and civil parish in East Devon the English county of Devon. The village lies about 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Honiton, 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Ottery St Mary, and 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Talaton.
The Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of Boscastle and Crackington Haven in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after flash floods caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over eight hours that afternoon. The flood in Boscastle was filmed and extensively reported but the floods in Crackington Haven and Rocky Valley were not mentioned beyond the local news. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency from hydraulics consulting firm HR Wallingford concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140 m³/s, between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST. The annual chance of this flood in any one year is about 1 in 400. The probability each year of the heaviest three-hour rainfall is about 1 in 1300. At midday on 16 August 2004, heavy thundery showers had developed across the South West due to a weak disturbance to the northeast of the United Kingdom.
The 2007 Mozambican flood began in late December 2006 when the Cahora Bassa Dam overflowed from heavy rains on Southern Africa. It worsened on February 22, 2007 when the Category 4 Cyclone Favio made landfall on the central province of Inhambane; experts tracking the cyclone predicted that it would worsen flooding in the Zambezi River valley. The Zambezi River broke its banks, flooding the surrounding areas in Mozambique. The Chire and Rivubue rivers also flooded.
Miyako is a town located in Miyako District, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
The floods in Pakistan began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and, Balochistan regions of Pakistan, which affected the Indus River basin. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was affected by floods, with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province facing the brunt of the damage and casualties. According to Pakistani government data, the floods directly affected about 20 million people, mostly by destruction of property, livelihood and infrastructure, with a death toll of close to 2,000.
A series of floods hit Queensland, Australia, beginning in November 2010. The floods forced the evacuation of thousands of people from towns and cities. At least 90 towns and over 200,000 people were affected. Damage initially was estimated at around A$1 billion before it was raised to $2.38 billion. The estimated reduction in Australia's GDP is about A$30 billion. As at March 2012, there were 33 deaths attributed to the 2010–11 Queensland floods with a further three people still missing.
Typhoon Nalgae, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Quiel, was a powerful tropical cyclone that struck the Philippines, and it affected Hainan, China as a weak tropical storm. Nalgae was the eighth typhoon and the fourth super typhoon in 2011. Forming as the 32nd tropical depression of the season, the system formed on September 26 over the Philippine Sea. On September 27, it was named Nalgae as it explosively intensified into a typhoon on the next day. Nalgae reached its peak intensity as a Category 4 typhoon on September 30 while it made landfall over Luzon. Nalgae weakened into a tropical storm as it entered the South China Sea on October 1. Nalgae made landfall over the island of Guandong in China on October 4 as it weakened to a tropical depression. Nalgae dissipated on October 5 east of Vietnam.
Pragya is a development organisation which addresses the needs of people living in the most neglected and hard to reach areas of the world, such as high altitude regions and areas emerging from conflict. Pragya implements projects in the high altitude Himalayan regions of India and Nepal, and the highlands and savannahs of East Africa.
The effects of global warming include its effects on human health. The observed and projected increased frequency and severity of climate related impacts will further exacerbate the effects on human health. This article describes some of those effects on individuals and populations.
The 2015 South Indian floods resulted from heavy rainfall generated by the annual northeast monsoon in November–December 2015. They affected the Coromandel Coast region of the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. More than 500 people were killed and over 1.8 million people were displaced. With estimates of damages and losses ranging from nearly ₹200 billion (US$3 billion) to over ₹1 trillion (US$14 billion), the floods were the costliest to have occurred in 2015, and were among the costliest natural disasters of the year.
