[AUDIO LOGO] Channel changes due to increases in flooding as well as the frequency of flooding has been a concern recently.

We've measured river stages and flow for over a hundred years at some stations in the Ozarks.

And those two show there's been an increase in the frequency and magnitude of floods, particularly over the last couple of decades.

And so that, in turn, creates a situation where rivers have to adjust to that increase frequency and magnitude of flooding.

I think the most important changes we're seeing in the Midwest, the ones that are going to affect us economically and personally, are in the precipitation patterns and amounts that we're seeing.

That's really the climate change impact that does have the biggest effect on our day to day life right now.

MIKE KROMREY: Here in the Ozarks, we are living climate change.

Where we're really seeing impact is in our rivers and streams.

Erosion is happening more quickly, which is doing things like eating up hay fields and cropland, eroding people's yards and stream banks at their farms.

It's really quite remarkable.

This is being driven by an increased frequency and magnitude of flooding, which probably isn't rocket science to anybody listening.

We've noticed these massive floods this year.

In fact, here at the watershed center, we had about six storm events, which we used to only have one of those every two or three years, you know, really big storm events that wash out our trails and things.

MARC OWEN: Rivers have started to adjust to that new amount of rainfall.

And so we see them getting wider.

I've observed sometimes widths have changed maybe 30% all the way up to 100% change over those 80 years, with an increase in that rate over the last couple of decades is very noticeable.

You end up getting erosion and sediment transport of gravels and other soil and sediment through these systems that can cause problems.

TOBY DOGWILER: The most common impairment in the country is suspended sediment turbidity or suspended sediment in a stream.

So when you're getting more intense, harder rainfall, you get more runoff.

That runoff is able to erode soils, erode sediment, and carry them into the stream.

And that has impacts across the board on stream ecology.

If you're a bass fisherman, you know, those bass eat bugs, other critters that live in the stream or in the lake that they need to eat that are being impacted by those changes in water quality.

That's not to mention that there's also work out there that shows when we have these prolonged periods of dryness, chemicals build up in the soil.

And because it doesn't rain for a long time, or maybe we get a few light rains, not enough to really flush anything, and then we get these big intense rainfalls, it flushes all that stuff out of the soil at once.

That ends up in the groundwater and the stream.

So we get these really high concentration slugs of pollution into the system all at once.

MARC OWEN: It could carry, for instance, nutrients.

When nutrients get into a river ways, it creates algal blooms and other drops in dissolved oxygen.

And that has a lot of impacts on the aquatic organisms, but also in terms of recreation and things like that.

We have reservoirs that fill in with sediment.

Those might be drinking water supplies.

The cleaner waters are, the cheaper they are to-- to treat to deliver as high quality drinking water.

So there's an economic benefit there, too, big time.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It's really expensive to try to mitigate pollution, especially in the aquifer.

We need to keep it clean in the first place.

That will serve us well now.

It'll serve our economy well.

It'll serve future generations well.

Here in Springfield, we've got a lot of projects that we have-- you might have heard of rain gardens or infiltration basins, even rain barrels and things like that.

They capture water that you can use later for things, watering plants or whatever.

If somebody were to ask me, what's one thing I can do related to a waterway, trees are the answer.

MARC OWEN: Trees hold a lot of water.

and they really can impact runoff rates because they have leaves, and they slow down runoff because of how rain has to go down through their canopy.

The health of our water is directly connected to the health of our land.

That's why Watershed is our name.

It's about the land that feeds into our-- our river ways, which is also our drinking water.

Here at the Watershed Center, we try to get the rainwater that falls here to slow down, spread out, and soak in.

Climate change is a big global problem that's hard to address.

We can help people respond in ways that are good for groundwater recharge, good for rivers and lakes and fish, and good for local economy.

So we work with local producers on the rural and agricultural spectrum to help them do conservation practices that are good for soil and water.

I'm not that pessimistic.

We might have the ability to help reduce some of those impacts through innovation and technology.

And I think there's a lot of opportunity there for, you know, people that have ideas, you know, really just scratching the surface of maybe what-- what we can do.