The assessment of natural flood management measures as a climate change
adaptation option through land use scenarios Oana Iacob1,4, John S. Rowan1,4, Iain Brown2,4, Chris Ellis3,4 1
Centre for Environmental Change & Human Resilience, University of Dundee 2
The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen,
3
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Inverleith Row, Edinburgh 4
ClimateXChange, High School Yards, Edinburgh
Introduction
Study area
Data correction and model calibration
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing both scientific and civil society. Greater variability and more frequent extremes of temperature and precipitation result in increased risk of flooding with corresponding social, economic and environmental impact. An important adaptation strategy is to promote more integrated approaches to catchment management, which combine natural flood management (NFM) measures with more traditional, structurallybased engineering interventions. NFM seeks to utilise natural soil, wetland and groundwater storage at the catchment scale to attenuate runoff generation and downstream flooding. Such schemes have multiple co-benefits including water quality, biodiversity and amenity and so contribute to greater resilience to uncertain climate futures. As a case-study of a more integrated approach to land use planning, the policy target of the Scottish Government to expand woodland in Scotland by 100,000 ha by 2025 is considered.
Tarland Burn drains approximately 75 km square of land and enters the River Dee at the
Meteorological data correction
village of Aboyne. The Tarland Burn is typical for many agricultural regions of Northeast Scotland, in which the major land uses are arable, plantation forestry, improved and unimproved grassland, heather moorland and mixed broadleaved woodland. Frequent floodings have been reported both in
Figure 6. a) Met Office grid rainfall data and location of the network stations; b) Correction factors for each station Model calibration
Figure 3. Land use map Tarlanc cathment Figure 1. Comparison of observed and simulated climate change based on three large-scale indicators in the atmosphere, the cryosphere and the ocean: change in continental land surface air temperatures (IPPC 2013)
Scenario development Social, environmental and economic drivers are
The Scottish Government’s target for
playing an important role in the spatial
woodland
Methods
distribution and the scale of afforestation. These
opportunities but also new challenges.
This analysis is undertaken using climate
drivers were polled together in developing
Woodland
change projections drawn from UK
alternative land use scenarios which are being
potential as a NFM measure, but locating
Climate Change Projections (UKCP09) in a
investigated to quantify their effects on runoff
this new planting is constrained by
Results
fully
generation and flood hydrograph characteristics.
physical and cultural constraints .
Land use change should be carefully managed for planned benefits and to avoid
distributed
hydrological
model
expansion creation
poses has
new
recognised
(WaSiM-ETH) operationalized for the
unintended consequences, such as changing the timing of tributary flood responses.
Tarland sub-basin of the River Dee,
Whilst woodland expansion may only provide modest gains in flood reductions the
Scotland. Model calibration is undertaken
cobenefits contribute to a coherent ecosystem-based adaptation strategy promoting
using Parameter Estimation Tool (PEST)
landscape resilience at the landscape scale.
and meteorological data from 2005 to
Acknowledgements
2006.
ClimateXChange, MetOffice, SEPA, Ole Roessler (Bern University), Marie Castelazzi Figure 2. WaSiM model configuration
Figure 4. Socio-economic scenarios (Castelazzi & Brown, 2011)
Figure 5. Potential for afforestation (Castelazzi et al., 2012)
(JHI), Iain Brown (JHI), James Stample (JHI), Leah Jackson (JHI)