Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/P010601/1
Quantifying the efficacy of in situ Natural Flood Management (NFM) through monitoring and model predictions including uncertainty
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor J Freer, University of Bristol, Geographical Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Bristol, Geographical Sciences
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Overall Classification:
- Freshwater
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Hydrological Processes
- Earth Surface Processes
- Floods
- Catchment management
- Ecosystem Scale Processes
- Abstract:
- Flooding is predicted to increase across the UK due to climate change. Resulting from an increase in winter rainfalls and apotential general increase in rainfall intensities. There is a need to understand what flood mitigation measures are effective and affordable to improve flood resilience under a changing climate. Part of this debate has been to consider more integrated catchment management based approaches to reduce flood risk and associated other benefits such as reducing nutrient loads to waters, carbon storage and biodiversity. One set of options being discussed is to utilise a Natural Flood Management approach, which is the alteration, restoration or use of landscape features to reduce flood risk. NFM approaches is an umbrella term for various interventions such as but not limited to small built water storages (small dams), Woodland Creation, and changes in land management. The aim is that by putting the right intervention in the right part of the landscape you maximise the benefits gained (including flood risk reduction), the trouble is that there is very sparse information of how effective these range of interventions are currently, nor how best to configure them spatially in the landscape. Natural England and the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South-West (FWAG) have been trialling the useof NFM approaches, also known as Working With Natural Processes (WWNP), in two catchments in Somerset. So far they have introduced >100 NFM interventions across the catchment landscape in as part of a project looking at how to reduce flood risk and at the same time gain additional environmental benefits for reducing both soil loss and nutrient loads to streams. Therefore the goal is that communities are better protected from flooding downstream and our rivers are cleaner and should support a greater biodiversity - i.e. a healthy river ecosystem. This project aims to take scientific advantage of this considerable investment in NFM and monitor these interventions in real time for a range of rainfall driven storms to quantify and characterise how they behave. Such data is urgently needed to inform the national debate of how we better manage landscape for flooding risk and if NFM can be an effective part of that approach. Importantly we shall then be able to use this understanding of their behaviour to better represent these features in our computer models of rainfall to river flow processes. So how rainfall is converted to streamflow as the water moves through the catchment landscape. We have computer models that predict how this water moves and how it is connected across the landscape due our general understanding of water flows in the environment overland and through soils to the river. What we do not have is a clear understanding of how NFM interventions interact with these general catchment processes and both delay and reduce the amount of water reaching the stream. This research will enable us to better define these interactions and so improve our ability to predict how NFM reduces or changes the risk of flooding downstream. Once these NFM features are characterised then we can use our modelling capability to look at what NFM interventions should be deployed at which points in the landscape to maximise their effectiveness and gain the greatest benefit for the least cost. This means we can test different approaches and spatial configurations, and in the process gain better tools to manage our landscape for flood risk reduction and understand the effectiveness of NFM that is underpinned by a strong evidence base. Therefore flood risk managers and other practitioners will be better informed about the optimal decisions they can make to reduce flood risk and work more effectively with farmers and other stakeholders in implementing these approaches in the landscape.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/P010601/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £98,124
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - Student Stipend | Total - RTSG |
|---|---|---|
| £19,485 | £67,640 | £11,000 |
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