[Newfie]

This is not my field but let me try. Others here will gently correct me if I am wrong.

The historic plains were riddled with lakes and bogs, places where water collected if even seasonally. Those ponds were drained and turned into “productive” farm land.

Returning the plains to their pre-Columbian state is likely not possible but simply letting more and larger patches be would work to allow those sustainable habitats to reoccur.

What calls me is that much of the food produced in those acres are wasted either through our inconsiderate habits or through ethanol production.

The other thing is the aquifers are being depleted because this land requires irrigation. This is fossil water that accumulate over eons and is not readily replaceable.

[yellowcanoe]

This is not my field but let me try. Others here will gently correct me if I am wrong.

The historic plains were riddled with lakes and bogs, places where water collected if even seasonally. Those ponds were drained and turned into “productive” farm land.

Returning the plains to their pre-Columbian state is likely not possible but simply letting more and larger patches be would work to allow those sustainable habitats to reoccur.

Yes, we'll never get back all the ponds that used to exist on the plains, however Ducks Unlimited has helped to restore and manage at least 12.5 million acres of waterfowl habitat in North America. I remember seeing a summary of budgets of major nature related charities in Canada and Ducks Unlimited was way out in front. 90% of their members are hunters so it seems hunters are much more willing to contribute to preserving habitat than non-hunters. Of course there aren't going to be very many ducks to hunt if the habitat they breed in has been destroyed.

[vtsnowedin]

In the Dakotas a lot of the farm to market roads have been built by taking about two feet of earth by ten feet wide on each side of the road and mounding it in the center and then placing base courses and pavement on top of that. That raises the road about three feet above the surrounding prairie so the wind blows the snow off it keeping it clear of drifts in winter. The secondary effect is to make ponds of the ditches each side ten feet wide by miles long. Coming over a rise you can have thousands of ducks in season lift off and fly a circle to settle back down after you have passed.
I don't know as that was deliberate but the ducks don't seem to care.

[dohboi]

Beyond [a] reasonable drought: New Zealand's climate future

NIWA's projections are based on four scenarios, known as representative concentration pathways, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The pathways range from a best-case scenario of decreasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere by 2100, through to a scenario where the levels continue to increase throughout this century.

RNZ has used NIWA's data to visualise two extremes – the number of ‘rain days’ each season, when at least 1mm of rain falls; and ‘hot days’, when the maximum temperature gets over 25 degrees Celsius.

...

Right now in areas like Auckland or Whangārei, there are about 30 days every summer where the mercury shoots up to 25 degrees Celsius or more – roughly one in every three days.

That’s already hotter than it was 50 years ago, when the two cities experienced maybe a dozen ‘hot days’ each summer – balmy beach days interspersed with comfortably warm periods.

By the middle of this century – not all that far away – the number of hot days could nearly double, to 50 a summer.

By 2100, within the lifetime of children being born now, nearly every summer day will be a ‘hot day’ in Auckland and Whangārei. The cool days of respite will be over.

Spring rainfall in both places is projected to diminish – meaning it will already be drier when summer begins.

In Northland, even winter rain days are projected to decrease, meaning droughts could become severe, Sood says.

...

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/cli ... ate-future

[REAL Green]

Beyond [a] reasonable drought: New Zealand's climate future

I am preparing for heat and drought even though here in the Mo Ozarks we are seeing a cooler and wetter period. The forecast I have read about climate change and the Ozarks call for more moisture because heat means more water in the atmosphere. I suspect as heat continues to build this will shift to hot and dry periods too so maybe we have a cool wet winters and hot and dry summers thing IOW extremes. It has been unusually wet now for several years around here. Uncomfortably so in the winter with long periods of grey, wet, and cool. I hardly gathered any solar this winter. It was a horrible winter for solar.

I have a rotational grazing permaculture system that embraces a polyculture of grass, weeds, and brush with a multi species of cows and goats. The industrial agriculture of the large cow calf operations around here could be in a world of hurt with extremes. The monocultures of these operations with cool season grasses is dangerous if droughts become a regular yearly thing in the summer. I feel a polyculture especially mixed with drought tolerant native grasses is the key. I participated in a program to introduce warm season grasses that has succeeded on several fields. So, this is part of the reason I added goats to my grazing mix and embraced weeds and brush. There is more money in cattle but goats allow for a polyculture that better manages diversity of a pasture with less chemicals and machine use. Goats need less water too and that could be an issue even around here in the future. We are blessed with great water here in the Ozarks but that could change in severe drought situations.

[Tuike]

100-Year Drought Hits Poor EU Region Already Reeling from Virus -bloomberg
The dry spell that’s scorching parts of the European Union’s eastern wing is devastating harvests and exacerbating what’s expected to be the region’s deepest economic downturn since at least the fall of communism. In parts of Romania and Poland, the drought is the worst in a century. In the Czech Republic it’s the worst in five. It’s raising questions of how to ensure food security in a region with painful memories of both food shortages under totalitarian regimes and the more recent scramble for medicine and protective gear to fight against the coronavirus.