Invited Essay Climate Change and Water Management Challenges Facing the Great Plains

In the semiarid landscape of the Great Plains, water and agriculture are inextricably bound together. Management of the region's water will be even more important as the Plains grapples with climate change in the future.

Dave Aiken is a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln who specializes in water law, energy law, and agricultural law. He is also a Center for Great Plains Studies Fellow and regularly publishes on water issues. In this article, Aiken prepares us for upcoming water management challenges. As floods, droughts, and groundwater depletion come to the forefront of agricultural conversations, scholars like Aiken will be even more important. His perspective is an interdisciplinary one, mixing science, policy, and law to call attention to this topic. The approach is important, as many factors will play into how the Great Plains deals with climate change in the future. A varied approach with many voices is the only way to begin approaching these issues.

The importance of interdisciplinary thinking is vital to who we are at the Center for Great Plains Studies. And it's why we've chosen the topic "Climate Change and Culture in the Great Plains" for our upcoming Great Plains conference (spring 2021). Climate change science and scientists are vital, of course, but we hope to add a new layer by investigating the cultural aspects of climate change. We'll ask questions such as, How do we communicate the science? Why are many people still divided? What do the disciplines of psychology, economics, sociology, and political science have to teach us regarding climate change? And, ultimately, how do we make group decisions about something that will have such a large impact on our future?

As the Center's assistant director, I'd like to thank Aiken for the excellent piece that follows.

Katie Nieland

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The latest federal report identifying the impacts of a warming climate on the United States paints a challenging picture for the Great Plains region and the nation.

Heavy rainfall is increasing in intensity and frequency across the United States and globally and is expected to continue to increase (Wuebbles et al. 2017, 10).

Heat waves have become more frequent in the United States since the 1960s, while extreme cold temperatures and cold waves are less frequent. Recent record-setting hot years are projected to become common in the near future for the United States, as annual average temperatures continue to rise (Wuebbles et al. 2017, 10).

Under higher [carbon emission] scenarios, and assuming no change to current water resources management, chronic, long-duration hydrological drought is increasingly possible before the end of this century (Wuebbles et al. 2017, 11).

As a region, the Great Plains is famous for its water insecurity, as reflected by its earliest designation as the Great American Desert. Precipitation in the semiarid Great Plains has always been highly variable, sometimes alternating between flood and drought (Shafer et al. 2014, 441–42). The region suffered major floods in 2011 and 2019 and a searing drought in 2010–14 (Lall et al. 2018, 149–50; Umphlett et al. 2020). The most likely future suggests much, much more of the same (Oglesby et al. 2015).

A regional future of higher temperatures, more drought, and more flooding poses significant regional water management challenges. In this article, I examine what is involved in addressing these challenges relative to increased stormwater runoff, irrigation and groundwater depletion, rainwater harvesting, municipal stormwater and wastewater reuse, and habitat protection.

Stormwater Runoff

Heavier spring stormwater runoff will intensify current problems with soil erosion and nonpoint water pollution from agricultural chemicals. Riparian buffers, also called buffer strips, are one strategy that reduces both soil erosion and water pollution from agricultural chemicals. The riparian buffers or filter strips are vegetated areas—typically grass but also forests—through which the field runoffis filtered before it reaches a lake or river. The filter strip is almost always land that was formerly cultivated, so establishing a riparian buffer or filter strip reduces the size of the farmer's field. Riparian buffers between cropland and water...