Designing and managing forests and woodlands to reduce flood risk
This Practice Guide provides advice to landowners, forest and woodland managers, planners, practitioners and flooding authorities, on how forests, forest management and woodland creation can affect flood flows and flood water storage. Flooding is a major environmental hazard facing the UK and one that is expected to increase with climate change. Societal impacts and economic damages are likely to escalate, with major floods already costing multiple £billion.
This guide presents interventions to slow run-off including:
- Implementing good practice measures such as less intensive restock cultivation, blocking drains, retaining large woody material and leaky dams in drains and channels where appropriate, and restoring watercourses and riparian buffer areas, will help to manage these effects, as well as remedy past impacts
- Install features to store more floodwater and/or slow run-off within woodlands and forests . This includes potentially using forest infrastructure such as roads, embankments and culverts to hold back f lood flows, or installing formal flood storage features such as timber or soil bunds .
- Use of leaky woody dams . Leaky woody dams are a natural and valuable feature of woodland streams (sustained by wood inputs from native riparian woodland) but are often removed because of concerns that they could be washed out and block downstream structures, or adversely affect fish movement .