Farmers who had fields and crops flooded in the fall floods of 2016 may need more than a single growing season to nurse the flooded soils back to health. Soil compaction, loss of nutrients and destruction of soil microbial activity are often the results of flooding.

These same problems occur anytime a field floods, but repairing the problem and re­­turning the soil to good health is more difficult when the growing season is over, according to Mahdi Al-Kaisi, Iowa State University (ISU) Ex­­tension soil management specialist with the Agronomy Department.

Normally, flooding occurs in the spring or summer, but the floods that swamped thousands of acres of Iowa...