| On Topic
Scientists join forces with farmers,
communities and local authorities in major
flood mitigation research project
Choosing different crops, building soil organic matter and planting more trees could allow farmers to reduce the risk of
nearby rivers from bursting their banks miles downstream, according to an innovative new research project.
esearchers in a collaborative
project led by the University of
Reading will work with farmers,
advisors, communities and
local authorities across the
West Thames area to learn how
different land management methods impact on
flood risk.
The LANDWISE (LAND management in
loWland catchments for Integrated flood riSk
rEduction) proposal was one of only three to be
backed with funding from the National
Environmental Research Council (NERC)’s
£4.1m Understanding the Effectiveness of
Natural Flood Management (NFM) program,
and will receive £1.25m.
A lot of attention recently has been given to
‘slowing the flow’ within river channels using
wood to create leaky barriers. LANDWISE aims
to look at the wider landscape and investigate
ways to reduce the volume of water entering
river channels in the first place, and to ‘slow the
flow’ by enabling water to move slowly below
the ground surface. This can be done by
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10 | Farming Monthly | November 2017
increasing the amount of water that can be
absorbed by soil and returned to atmosphere
through crops and trees, or stored in deep
groundwater.
These more natural methods, including crop
choice, land preparation, building soil organic
matter and tree-planting, can reduce the
amount of water that runs off the land surface.
They improve soil structure to allow more
rainwater to infiltrate below ground.
Dr Joanna Clark, Associate Professor of
Environmental Science at the University of
Reading, and project lead, said: “If you think
about the land surface as a bucket, then these
different land use and management methods
can help us to increase the size of that bucket
and help to empty it so that it can hold more
water when it rains again. This is about making
small changes over the large catchment area
as a whole, rather than large changes in small
areas where flooding occurs.
“The views, experience and knowledge of
farmers, landowners and communities are often
overlooked during research that heavily affects
them. The LANDWISE project is built upon the
innovative practices that are currently ongoing
within the West Thames area. We found there
are many farmers who have already made
responsible changes to their land management
practices that have the potential to reduce
flooding, and others could be further
incentivised by changes in agricultural policy.
“More work is now needed to fully
understand how effective current efforts made
by farmers to rebuild soils have been to reduce
flooding - the LANDWISE project will quantify
by how much, where and how the flood risk
benefits are scaled up from small catchment to
large river basins, like West Thames. To do this,
we will work on developing methods to
measure the land surface from space and use
of this data in predictive models alongside local
knowledge. We are proud to have been
awarded a share of funding that will shed light
on how we can reduce the impact of flooding
by dealing with the sources of runoff rather than
the downstream effect.”
The LANDWISE research focuses on the
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