The Iowa Flood Center is receiving $500,000 through a Community Project Funding award to install hydrostations in 18 counties, which monitor soil moisture, groundwater levels and stream conditions.
Third District Congressman Zach Nunn says more hydrologic monitoring in the state will help prevent issues for farmers and emergency management. “We can do more on the preventative side to help do everything from, you know, nitrate mitigation on the application of fertilizer, to how we help a first responder really target areas that are most likely to have flooding,” he says.
Nunn says the additional hydrostations will cover all 21 counties in the Third District. The Iowa Flood Center’s Larry Weber says the stations will also connect existing data to a new drought information system.
“And that’s going to use deep learning and machine learning and artificial intelligence to not only take these data points, and you can average them across the state, that’s easy, but how does this data point relate to stream flow where we have all these other sensors?,” he says.
Weber says these tools will help them create a more comprehensive drought forecast. That data allows farmers and emergency management to forecast drought and flood conditions.
