by Peter Moyle

Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, by Tim Palmer. University of California Press 2024.                                            

Flooding is a natural phenomenon that we humans keep assuming can be controlled with enough effort and engineering.  But this simply is not possible, as floods across the globe repeatedly demonstrate. People continue to be surprised when landscapes become waterscapes. This brings loss of life and enormous costs of repairing damaged infrastructure and constructing bigger levees and dams for flood control. As Tim Palmer says in his new book (2024) local to global failures of current flood management practices: “The age of denial is over. The time has come to take a different path  (p 140)”.  Palmer is the right person to explore new pathways.  He is an independent writer and photographer who has spent a lifetime exploring the rivers and watersheds of North America, but especially those in California (Palmer 2010). 

This book exposes the inability (for the most part) of agencies throughout the USA to deal with problems created by floods and flooding in a realistic fashion. These problems are worsening as global warming increases the size and frequency of storms that bring floods.  Because politics often overrides sensible solutions to flooding, disasters created by floods are the most frequent and largest consumers of disaster relief funds. Most of these disasters are preventable. Scientists and engineers who study floods and their consequences, as Palmer documents do so well, have produced numerous reports and papers on how to live with floods (basically, get out of the way) that have been down-played since at least the 1930s, at the cost of billions of dollars and many lives.  This basic story is actually well known, if not in all its details, but there is just too much money to be made building levees, dams, towns, farms, and other infrastructure on cheap, flat, floodable land.  

The naïve optimism of those who rely on dams and levees is pervasive and has led to the widespread belief that flooding can be prevented if we pour enough concrete and move enough dirt.   Palmer’s book is timely because there have been great improvements in responses to flooding in some areas, including in California. But even with improved knowledge, the likelihood of more frequent and bigger floods is increasing to the point where we should be getting prepared for them now, on an accelerated basis. The 1849-50 flooding that turned the Central Valley into an inland sea (Kelley 1959) will be repeated at some point, probably on a much bigger scale. 

Palmer tells this basic story extremely well with excellent documentation, making this information accessible to a wide range of people. This includes relating his experiences with floods and his interviews with people who have had houses and property destroyed by floods, often several times. Disaster relief programs often allow people to keep rebuilding in high-risk places, even though they and flood management agencies know better. The clarity of Palmer’s writing and his attention to facts reminds me of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It is an urgent call for action starting with changes in our attitudes towards floods and flooding. The book is not all gloom and doom, however, because  Palmer makes a good case for positive actions that if taken now will pay off in the future, as the title of the book (Seek Higher Ground) indicates.  He points out, for example, that only about 7% of the land in the USA is floodable or capable of being flooded with peak flows. This makes the point that from a land use perspective, floodable land is a relatively small acreage so it should be what is spent today on flood management.

Palmer’s coverage of the issues is thorough and well-documented. The chapters on insurance (8) and relocation (9) presented information that was largely new to me, as a biologist.  But chapters covering more familiar ground are there as well, on the history of floods (2), the ecological and economic importance of floods and floodplains (3, 7), and the need for green infrastructure (3, 4, 10). Even those who work with flood management issues regularly will find it worth reading and discussing for new insights and examples.  The book is also a good read for general audiences seeking to better understand the expanded role floods will play in the future.  To read further in this area, especially for California examples, go to other UC Press books such as Mount (1995), Garrone (2013), Opperman et al (2017), and Ingram and Malamud-Roam (2013). Otherwise, there are lots of other books on individual flood disasters (e.g. Kelley 1989) but few are as comprehensive and dispassionate as Palmer’s book. 

On the positive side, our understanding of floods and flooding is improving. For example, the UCD Center for Watershed Sciences got its start as a home for a multidisciplinary research projects to develop an understanding of the Cosumnes River floodplain and the native and non-native fishes that use it. The Cosumnes was chosen because it has a ‘natural’ flow and flooding regime that is attractive as a model for restoring California floodplains for native biodiversity. The project was soon expanded to include studies of the Yolo Bypass, a large highly managed floodplain in the Central Valley. The findings of this research are summarized in weekly CaliforniaWaterBlog posts since 2011 (https://californiawaterblog.com). The posts provide support for the conclusions and solutions which Palmer’s book discusses so clearly. The book is a fairly easy read, despite the subject matter, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the future of California water and fish but especially to anyone interested in learning to how live with our floods and flooding.  

“Tomorrow will bring greater floods whether we plan for them or not. It is our choice to live …in their path or to seek higher ground (p269)”.

Peter B. Moyle is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and is Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. 

Further reading

Cox, C. (2023). The Trillion Gallon Question: California’s dams are vulnerable; and thousands of lives hang in the balance. How long does the state have to avert disaster? The New York Times Magazine, June 25, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/us/california-dams-extreme-weather.html

Dettinger, M.D. and B. L. Ingram. (2011). The Coming Megafloods. Scientific American, 308(1):64-71.

Garone, P. (2011). The Fall and Rise of the Wetlands of California’s Great Central Valley. Berkeley: UC Press.

Hanak, E., J. Lund, A. Dinar, B. Gray, R. Howitt, J. Mount, P. Moyle, and B. Thompson. (2011). Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, 500 pp.

Katz, J. V. E., C. Jeffres, J. L. Conrad, T. R. Sommer, J. Martinex, S. Brumbaugh, N. Corline, and P.B. Moyle. (2017). Floodplain farm fields provide novel rearing habitat for Chinook salmon. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0177409. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177409.

Ingram, L. and F. Malamud-Roam. (2013). The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Kelley, R. (1989). Battling the Inland Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press

Lund, J.R. (2012). Flood Management in California. Water 4: 157-169; doi:10.3390/w4010157, 2012.

Lund, J. R. (2023). Portfolio Solutions for Water Management https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/08/27/portfolio-solutions-for-water-flood-management/

Lund, J., D. Des Jardins, and K. Schaefer. (2023). Whiplash again- learning from wet (and dry) years. California WaterBlog.  https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/05/21/whiplash-again-learning-from-wet-and-dry-years/

Mount, J.F. (1995). California Rivers and Streams: the  Conflict between Fluvial Processes and Land Use.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

Moyle P. B., Crain P.K., and Whitener K. (2007). Patterns in the use of a restored California floodplain by native and alien fishes. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 5(3): 1-27. http://repositories.cdlib.org/jmie/sfews/vol5/iss3/art1.

Moyle, P.B., J.  Lund, A. Rypel, C. Jeffres, and N. Pinter. (2023). Living with extreme floods in California. California WaterBlog . https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/07/30/living-with-extreme-floods-in-california/

Opperman, J.J, P.B. Moyle, E.W. Larsen, J.L. Florsheim, and A.D. Manfree. (2013). Floodplains: Processes, Ecosystems, and Services in Temperate Regions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Palmer, T. (2010). Rivers of California: Nature’s Lifelines in the Golden State.  Heyday Books.

Pinter, N., J. Lund, and P. B. Moyle. (2019). The California water model: resilience through failure. Hydrological Processes 2019: 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13447

Rypel, A.L., C.A. Parisek, J. Lund, A. Willis, P.B. Moyle, S. Yarnell, and K. Börk. (2023). What’s the Problem with Dead Beat Dams? https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/05/28/whats-the-dam-problem-with-deadbeat-dams