There is a good level of understanding of the local hydrological effects of most NFM measures. However, the wider hydrological impacts of NFM measures at the catchment scale are less clear. This topic includes research on the effects of NFM, as well as research that supports delivery, such as social research on land managers attitudes to NFM or barriers to implementation. Scientific research is available in all forms and scales, for example, from empirical studies to new modelling tools and from the plot scale to the full catchment scale.
The NERC NFM research programme is advertising a series of webinars. These one hour webinars occur roughly every month and cover a range of topics. The aim of the webinar series is to allow NFM researchers and practitioners to share knowledge and experiences. Registration is required in advance. For more details on future webinars or to view past webinars please visit the link below.
The Interreg BwN (Building with Nature)/FAIR /C5a end event 'Be Adaptive to Become Resilient' was held on the 4th June 2020. Over 150 people attended the online event. The recordings and presentations from the webinars and workshops are now available online (see link below). The event included keynote speeches by Kerstin Brunnström (President of the CPMR North Sea Commission) and Steve Mathies (Global practice leader on Coastal Restorations at Stantec).
The European Environment Agency has recently published a report on the importance of floodplains (report title: "Floodplains: a natural system to preserve and restore"). The report highlights the importance of natural and restored floodplains for managing flood risk and supporting other ecosystem services. A pdf of this report can be accessed via the link below.
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.
Innovation award for project highlighting the huge value of existing natural flood protection features in Scotland