As we don our waterproofs and raise our umbrellas in an attempt to shield ourselves from the recent downpours, we find ourselves cursing the British weather for “raining cats and dogs”. But do we stop to think how lucky we are to have freshwater; that compound of H2O which sustains all life?
The summer of 2022 feels like a distant memory, yet the prolonged dry weather and record-breaking temperatures have made their mark in history. Being the fifth driest summer in England and Wales since 1836 and temperatures reaching well above average, habitats and wildlife were under stress, regional hosepipe bans were in place and severe wildfires devastated landscapes.
The effect of climate change on weather patterns is in part responsible, but another contributing factor is the intense management and modification of our catchments and rivers. The impacts on our urban areas are more obvious with swathes of impermeable surfaces and straight or culverted rivers. But even in the countryside there’s compacted soil, tracks and paths and watercourses squeezed through bridges and mills, as well as fewer trees and hedges and poorly functioning floodplains. Overall, there’s less space for water. We have shaped a landscape, both deliberately and inadvertently, which ensures that as soon as rain falls it is hurried on its journey towards the sea. Our job now is to slow the flow.
There are several ways in which we can slow the flow. For example, we can:
- Create woodland to intercept the rainfall
- Improve soil health to allow the rain to infiltrate
- Establish hedges, buffer strips and bunds to disrupt surface water flows
- Construct ponds, scrapes, and swales to temporarily store rainwater
- Install Leaky woody debris dams to slow the flow in streams
- River channel restoration – put the meanders back in rivers to make rivers longer
- Floodplain reconnection – allow the river to flow onto the floodplain
These collective measures, applied across the landscape in both urban and rural locations, provide Natural Flood Management - or NFM. We want our catchments to be like a sponge; to soak up the water, hold on to it and slowly let it trickle out through the landscape. Not only is flood risk reduced but these measures can filter out nutrients and sediments, create wetland habitats and provide carbon storage.
Through our Dorset Wild Rivers project, we have been applying these measures in a number of catchments
- Stour headwaters - tree planting
- Devils Brook - river channel enhancements
- Corfe River – creating riparian buffer strips
- River Hooke - installed woody debris dams and in field bunds
- Wild Woodbury - floodplain re-connection
- Dorset Peat Partnership – investigating the feasibility of blocking drains on heathland mires
