River and floodplain management

An open access paper on "The potential of runoff attenuation features as a Natural Flood Management approach" has been published in the Journal of Flood Risk Management. The study utilised data from the Belford Burn catchment in N.E. England, and in particular the offline storage areas within the catchment. A modelling framework was created to demonstrate the impact of an offline storage area. The results showed that peak flow can be reduced by more than 30% at downstream receptors within the catchment.

A report has been published today by Scotland's Centre of Expertise for Waters on "Communities at risk of flooding and their attitudes towards natural flood management". The project team at the James Hutton Institute explored factors that affect community support for Natural Flood Management (NFM) and to understand the extent to which flood risk communities support NFM. They discussed NFM in focus groups in four Scottish communities at risk of flooding. The project found that such communities may often have an interest in learning about NFM.

A co-organised event in Edinburgh (May 2019) brought together international experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities for delivering Nature-Based Solutions. The goal of the event was to facilitate the knowledge exchange and share best practices between international researchers, practitioners and policymakers. One of the project partners involved in the event, LAND4FLOOD, have produced a short report on the event (link below).

Adding large wood or leaky barriers to rivers is often promoted as a viable NFM technique but there is a lack of clear understanding on how best to represent them in computer models.  The open access paper "Representing natural and artificial in‐channel large wood in numerical hydraulic and hydrological models" has been published in the journal WIREs Water and aims to fill this knowledge gap. To find out further information on the paper and download a copy please visit the link below. 

A handbook on Nature-Based Solutions has been published by "ThinkNature" (https://platform.think-nature.eu/). The handbook was developed as part of the ThinkNature project which recieved funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The main purpose of the handbook is to gather and promote current knowledge surrounding Nature-Based Solutions . The handbook looks at different aspects of Nature-Based Solutions (e.g. project devlopment, financing, policy making) through a number of informative chapters.

An open access book has recently been published addressing the issue of Nature-Based Flood Risk Management on Private Land. It is published by Springer and was edited by Thomas Hartmann, Lenka Slavíková and Simon McCarthy. The authors highlight that knowledge from many different disiplines will be required to deliver Nature-Based Solutions on private land. Therefore, the book highlights a number of international case studies and gives a different disciplinary perspectives (via a commentry) on each case.  The book can be accessed from the link below.

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.