Water, water everywhere.

I just went to weather.com to check the weekend forecast, didn't even get past the homepage...deadly floods in Texas?! I guess it was largely due to hurricane remnants on the gulf coast, still I was alarmed to read about yet another flood this year. The Pakistan flood obviously dwarfs our issues across the pond, but the Ames flood actually made me conscious about this ongoing issue all over the world.

Pakistan has suffered many horrific floods in the past 50+ years, thousands of lives lost and billions in property and crop damage...and counting. Iowa has very few deaths from flooding as far as I know, but crop damage is clearly a huge issue with our flood concerns, our entire economic foundation. Crop damage costs for 2010 haven't been calculated yet, but the 2008 flood cost Iowan farmers about 3 billion. It pains me to see such hard working people and families invest so much time and money, literally their lives, into crop production and reap such adverse effects, how sad. I really don't know jack about farming, but I do know about Iowa's natural landscape before every inch was cultivated by humans.

Iowa used to be a prairie, duh. Prairies have wetlands. K
The weather hasn't changed significantly in the past few thousand years; the landscape has completely changed though.
Currently, less than 1% of natural prairie land remains in Iowa, and less than 10% of the natural wetlands remain.
It doesn't take a genius to figure this out...so where does the water go? It sits on top of a saturated layer of soil until humans take care of it, or til it drains, evaporates, whatever.

http://www.iowaswaterandlandlegacy.org/home.aspx

To me the best solution is obvious, natural grasslands and wetlands should be restored throughout Iowa, we can start small and make it an ongoing project. Of course we still need our farms and cities, but prairie restoration projects even on a small scale will benefit everyone in the state. Our farms, businesses and properties don't need to take these periodic economic hits; we just need to quit destroying Iowa's naturally fertile soils and the immense biotic productivity of natural wetlands and grasslands.

I'm not very familiar with terrain in other parts of the world, but I'm sure this idea of simulating the natural landscape in any region could have positive effects (relating to flooding), at this point it's at least worth a shot.