Abstract
AbstractNatural Flood Management (NFM) is receiving much attention in the United Kingdom and across Europe and is now widely seen as a valid solution to help sustainably manage flood risk whilst offering significant multiple benefits. However, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of NFM interventions in reducing flood hazard at the catchment scale. The Belford Burn catchment (~6km2) in Northern England provides a focus for this article, and utilises observed data collected throughout the NFM project's monitoring period (2007–2012). This study discusses the introduction of catchment‐wide water storage through the implementation of runoff attenuation features (RAFs), in‐particular offline storage areas, as a means of mitigating peak flow magnitudes in flood‐causing events. A novel experimental monitoring setup is introduced alongside an analytical approach to quantify the impact of individual offline storage areas, which has demonstrated local reductions in peak flow for low magnitude storm events. Finally, a physically based model has been created to demonstrate the impact of a network of offline storage areas to enable assessment of storage thresholds required to mitigate design storm events, thus enabling design of an NFM scheme. The modelling results have shown that peak flow can be reduced by more than 30% at downstream receptors.
Highlights
Following recent large flood events in Europe, concerns have been raised over the reliance on structural measures to manage future flood risk (e.g., Kundzewicz, Pinskwar, & Brakenridge, 2012; Scholz & Yang, 2010)
This study investigates the potential to manage runoff through the use of runoff attenuation features (RAFs) that provide temporary storage of flood water, and disconnection and lengthening of flow pathways throughout catchment headwaters (Nicholson, Wilkinson, O'Donnell, & Quinn, 2012; Wilkinson, Quinn, & Welton, 2010)
The scenarios demonstrated that a combined storage of a network of RAFs has the potential to reduce peak flows by up to 30%, assuming 20,000 m3 of storage distributed between 35 RAFs
Summary
Following recent large flood events in Europe, concerns have been raised over the reliance on structural measures to manage future flood risk (e.g., Kundzewicz, Pinskwar, & Brakenridge, 2012; Scholz & Yang, 2010). Wide-ranging reviews of the impacts of rural land use and management practices have concluded that changes in runoff can be significant at the field/plot scale, evidence of changes being transferred to downstream flood sites is lacking (McIntyre et al, 2013; O'Connell, Ewen, O'Donnell, & Quinn, 2007). This study investigates the potential to manage runoff through the use of runoff attenuation features (RAFs) that provide temporary storage of flood water, and disconnection and lengthening of flow pathways throughout catchment headwaters (Nicholson, Wilkinson, O'Donnell, & Quinn, 2012; Wilkinson, Quinn, & Welton, 2010). The river response is flashy, with a time to peak of 2 hr, and the Base Flow Index is 0.313 (Boorman, Hollis, & Lilly, 1995), indicating a relatively high groundwater contribution, which can be attributed to the presence of the permeable rock formations (e.g., limestone) within the geology of the catchment (Nicholson, 2013)
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