Woodland

Woodlands can help to attenuate floods through a number of hydrological processes, such as the interception of rainfall, increased use of water (evapotranspiration), and increased infiltration of water into the soil profile.  Woodlands also act to slow surface runoff and reduce sediment transport down hillslopes, by increasing the resistance to flow. Upland areas, which have higher rainfall, steeper slopes, gullies and often quite shallow soils, can deliver significant amounts of floodwater from headwaters to the lower catchment areas. Well sited and managed woodlands protect the soil from disturbance and improve soil structure due to the action of tree roots and high inputs of organic matter. These conditions enhance the soil infiltration pathways and the water storage capacity thereby reducing direct surface run-off, erosion and sediment transport.

Scottish FRM2021 conference outputs now available

Scotland's Flood Risk Management Conference 2021 was held from the 1st - 5th February 2021. The conference was virtual this year and covered a range of topics such as finance and green recovery, science and policy updates and communication and engagement. The conference organisers (Sniffer) have now published the conference outputs on their website. It is possible to see the virtual presentations or view them on a Vimeo channel. All outputs can be access via the link below.   

NERC NFM programme webinar series

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. 

Be adaptive to become resilient conference outputs now available

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).

Communities at risk of flooding and their attitudes towards NFM report published

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.

Delivering Nature-Based Solutions workshop report published

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).

Nature-Based Solutions Handbook published by ThinkNature

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.

Natural Flood Management - A Farmer's Guide published by SRUC

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.

What can be learnt from working with a community to identify what flood risk management measures are needed, are acceptable and which deliver the greatest multiple benefits?
The 'Land management for increased flood resilience' report was published by CREW and authored by Spray et al., (2015).  The main objectives of the project were to undertake: A large scale survey of farmers’ attitudes to NFM and to the use of potential policy instruments to promote its uptake and delivery; andFarm-scale economic analyses of the impact of NFM measures under different scenarios.See - https://www.crew.ac.uk/publication/land-management-increased-flood-resilience
In 2016, SEPA published this handbook to help local authorities and landowners implement NFM