Recent research finds that repeated flooding events have a cumulative effect on the structural integrity of earthen levees, suggesting that the increase in extreme weather events associated with climate change could pose significant challenges for the nation’s aging levee system.
“Traditionally, levee safety inspections are based on visible signs of distress on the surface,” says Rowshon Jadid, a Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University and first author of a paper describing the research. “What we’ve found is that as a levee goes through repeated flood events, it gets weaker — but the damage may be invisible to the naked eye.”
