Multiple benefits

The Eddleston Water project, Tweed Forum and Scottish Government's long-running empirical study of the effectiveness of Natural Flood Management (NFM) has just been designated by UNESCO as one of their new Ecohydrology Demonstration sites, becoming the first one in the UK to achieve this recognition. The project is in its 13^th year of operation and will now be included as a Demonstration Site in the UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP), part of the intergovernmental UN system that’s dedicate

A focus review paper on mitigating floods and attenuating surface runoff with temporary storage areas (TSAs) in headwaters has been published in the journal WIRES (Wiley Interdiciplinary Reviews) Waters. TSAs represent a category of soft-engineered nature-based solutions that can provide dispersed, small-scale storage throughout a catchment.  Measures include e.g., bunds, offline ponds and leaky barriers. This open access paper focuses on the role of relatively small-scale (<10,000 m3) TSAs in headwater catchments for flood risk management. 

A report has been produced by the Environment Agency that evaluates their Natural Flood Management programme. Between 2017 and 2021, £15 million of government funding was invested in 60 pilots across England. The report looks at 4 phases of NFM project lifecycle; a) Partnership working, b) Valuing benefits and project assessment, c) Project implementation and d) monitoring and sustaining the benefits. 

The Forestry Commission, Scottish Forestry, Natural Resources Wales and Northern Ireland Forest Service have published a new UK-wide guide outlining how our forests and woodlands can reduce the damaging effects and financial impact of flooding on vulnerable communities. Woodlands can play a key role in flood mitigation and make an important contribution to reducing downstream flood risk.

A new open access book entitled “Spatial Flood Risk Management: Implementing Catchment-based Retention and Resilience on Private Land” has been published. Centralising the role of land and landowners, the book brings together knowledge from socio-economy, public policy, hydrology, geomorphology, and engineering to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base on spatial approaches to managing flood risks. It contains chapters from over 25 different European authors and is an output from the EU funded COST action "Natural Flood Retention on Private Land".

The Riverwoods initiative (see main website for more info) aims to create a network of thriving riverbank woodlands and healthy river systems across Scotland. It has recently published an interactive storymap which allows users to explore projects across Scotland and find out more generally on the initiative. This storymap can be accessed below. 

A manual supporting the implementation of Natural Flood Management measures has been published by CIRIA. It aims to set out the key stages in the delivery process of NFM. The manual has five parts which cover an overview of NFM, the philosophy behind NFM, detailed information behind a selection of measures, the delivery process and a supporting appendices. The manual can be accessed via the link below. 

A new policy note has been published by the Centre of Expertise for Waters on "Better Buffer Design, Placement and Management". The publication was produced by the James Hutton Institute and examines how considering an enhanced range of designs, and targeting them to most suitable landscapes and pressures on the environment, can be achieved to improve multiple outcomes (e.g. flood management), including aspects of wider context for improving the uptake of enhanced riparian measures. Many of the measures presented here could be viewed as Natural Flood Management approaches.