The way that rural land is managed, both in terms of the vegetative cover and the underlying soil, can greatly influence the pathways and speed by which incident rainfall reaches watercourses. Good land and soil management practices can help to minimise the generation of surface runoff and reduce downstream flood risk. Land and soil management for NFM involves cultivating soils to promote a good macro-structure and good organic matter content, thereby increasing soil infiltration and reducing surface flow generation and associated sediment transport. Surface water flooding is usually associated with heavy rainfall falling on impermeable surfaces, dry (capped) soils, frozen soils, or on a saturated catchment, causing overland flow to occur. This rainfall induced overland flow is quickly transferred to channels across the surface of the landscape due to the limited potential for soil infiltration. There is a consequent rapid rise in channel levels and a flashy catchment response to the rainfall. This high energetic flow of water across the landscape can result in erosion to soil and the transport of sediments (and sediment associated pollutants). Runoff management measures target these flow pathways, disconnecting them thereby attenuating the flow.
A practical handbook for farmers has recently been published by SRUC. The handbook is called "Natural Flood Management: A Farmer's Guide" and is available from the link below. The guide aims to give advice on NFM to landowners and farmers in Scotland. The handbook contains advice on measures such as riparian planting, sediment traps and wetland creation. It also contains case study examples.
The World Bank have published a report on Nature-Based Solutions for Disaster Risk Management. More on this report and background to the work can be found at the link below.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have recently published a book entitled "Engineering With Nature: An Atlas". The Atlas showcases 56 international projects, which includes one Scottish case study (the Bowmont Catchment). The atlas is organised into eight sections (Beaches and Dunes, Wetlands, Islands, Reefs, Riverine Systems, Levee setbacks and floodplains, use of vegetation and natural materials and environment enhancements of infrastructure).
A new video has been released outlining the role of the Eddleston Water project in the international Interreg Building with Nature project. For further details on the Eddleston water project please visit the case study page within the NFM network Scotland site. The project is funded by the Scottish Government and the European Union's Interreg North Sea Region Programme. The video can be viewed at the bottom of this page.
The West Cumbria Rivers Trust have recently published a new handbook called "Natural Flood Management Handbook: a practical guide for farmers". The book was funded by West Cumbria Rivers Trust, Environment Agency, Newground and Heritage Lottery Fund. The guide has been developed to offer simple, clear information on NFM measures for landowners and farmers in NW England.
A short report of the Interreg Building with Nature Coordination meeting has been published by Sniffer. The Scottish Government hosted the coordination meeting in Dundee in September and delegates had the opportunity to visit Eddleston, Montrose and St. Andrews NFM projects. A link to the workshop report can be found below.
A podcast released by America Adapts and sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund entitled, Flooding and Nature Based Solutions - the good, the bad and the ugly of flooding features interviews with experts discussing Nature based solutions to flood management.
The Building with Nature (BwN) project (funded by EU Interreg) has produced a short video to explain the project. The Scottish Government, SEPA and Tweed Forum are partners on the project and are focused on the 'catchments' workpackage (the Eddleston catchment is a case study site in the project).
The Environment Agency, CIRIA and other partners are hoping to develop technical guidance on specific Natural Flood Management measures. To begin with they have created a short scoping survey. This is your opportunity to contribute to this survey.
The survey is accessible via the link below and will close towards the end of June.
The work aimed to create a mosaic of river and floodplain habitats by allowing active river processes to develop a multi-threaded (anabranched) system together with floodplain wet woodland features. Prior to the work, the burn was a degraded perched watercourse and flowed around the edge of a field, with dredged spoil deposits used to build the flood embankments, thus disconnecting the burn from its floodplain area.