We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Standing trees, fallen logs, branches and leaf litter form a very dynamic and complex network of multiple channels and dams, which help to slow down flood flows
Although most of Britain’s original floodplain woodland has been lost due to past river engineering and land reclamation works, there is good evidence to suggest that it could have an important role to play in ameliorating downstream flooding. This is based on woodland’s greater hydraulic roughness compared to other vegetation types, which acts to slow down and thus potentially reduce flood peaks.
Unfortunately, floodplain woodlands also pose a number of risks for flood defence. These include enhanced upstream flooding due to the backing-up of floodwaters, restricted access to river banks for flood defence works, loss of engineered flood control, and increased downstream flooding caused by large woody debris blocking bridges and other structures.
A major element of our forest hydrology programme is to evaluate the effects of floodplain and riparian woodlands on flood flows. Studies include:
The final report on this Defra funded project was published in July 2008. The work provides further support for the potential of floodplain woodland to alleviate downstream flooding.
Restoring floodplain woodland for flood alleviation (PDF-1974K)
Unfortunately, it proved not possible to plant floodplain woodland at the selected sites and the project had to be curtailed. Lessons learnt and recommendations for future work are set out, including the need for one or more replacement demonstration sites to be established to communicate and explain the benefits of floodplain woodland for flood alleviation.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.