The replacement of native vegetation by crops has raised groundwater levels in the Pampas

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The South American Pampas, among the flattest and most fertile grasslands in the world, is overflowing. In the past 5 decades, the region has suffered severe floods that destroyed hundreds of hectares of produce, disrupted infrastructure, and displaced people. In a new study, researchers blame intense agriculture for the problem, showing that as local cropland expanded, so did floods—over the past 40 years, flooded areas doubled in size.

“These cycles of flooding were coming and going, but with each new one, areas [that] never flooded before started to flood,” said one of the study’s authors, remote sensing specialist Javier Houspanossian in the Group of Environmental Studies at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in San Luis, Argentina.

Flanked by the Andes to the west and the Brazilian highlands to the east, the Pampas spreads over parts of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Home to large cities, it also hosts some of the best farming soils on Earth: Good at absorbing rainwater, they dispense with artificial irrigation. These unique conditions make the area suitable for soy and corn plantations, which have displaced about 16% of native vegetation over the past 2 decades.

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