Tag Results: Flooding

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Field-based monitoring of instream leaky barrier backwater and storage during storm events

Engineered leaky barriers are increasingly used as natural flood management methods providing ecosystem and water quality benefits in addition to flood attenuation, complementing hard engineering flood defences. Fieldbased monitoring of a natural flood management site, Wilde Brook in the Corvedale catchment, England (UK) studied the rainfall-runoff relationship for a 5.36 km reach with 105 leaky barriers over two years. Paired pressure transducers were placed upstream and downstream of three channel spanning leaky barriers, allowing evaluation of upstream backwater rise relative to rainfall intensity, storm magnitude, and frequency. By increasing backwater rise, the leaky barriers caused overbank flows, resulting in a reduction in the crosssectional area velocity after the event. The incidence of overbank flow depended on the local stream crosssectional profile, barrier properties, location in the reach, and storm magnitude.

Beaver: The North American freshwater climate action plan

Rivers and streams, when fully connected to their floodplains, are naturally resilient systems that are increasingly part of the conversation on nature-based climate solutions. Reconnecting waterways to their floodplains improves water quality and quantity, supports biodiversity and sensitive species conservation, increases flood, drought and fire resiliency, and bolsters carbon sequestration. But, while the importance of river restoration is clear, beaver-based restorationfor example, strategic coexistence, relocation, and mimicryremains an underutilized strategy despite ample data demonstrating its efficacy. Climate-driven disturbances are actively pushing streams into increasingly degraded states, and the window of opportunity for restoration will not stay open forever. Therefore, now is the perfect time to apply the science of beaver-based low-tech process-based stream restoration to support building climate resilience across the landscape. Not every stream will be a good candidate for beaver-based restoration, but we have the tools to know which ones are. Let us use them.

Hydraulic Modeling of Beaver Dams and Evaluation of Their Impacts on Flood Events

In this study, we modeled 12 beaver dam cascade scenarios in two catchments for eight flood events with a two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic model.

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Effect of beaver dams on the hydrology of small mountain streams: Example from the Chevral in the Ourthe Orientale basin, Ardennes, Belgium

This research focuses on the hydrological effects of a series of six beaver dams on the Chevral River, a second order tributary of the Ourthe Orientale River in a forested area of the Ardennes.

Farming and Climate Change: How Beavers Can Help

The Beaver Trust presents a webinar on Climate Change effects on farming in Europe and how beavers can help mitigate some of the resultant drought and flood damage. 2021.

Beaver-induced spatiotemporal patch dynamics affect landscape-level environmental heterogeneity

Study of flood dynamics created by American beaver (C. canadensis K.) in a southern boreal landscape in Finland in
1970–2018.

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Beaver dams, hydrological thresholds, and controlled floods as a management tool in a desert riverine ecosystem, Bill Williams River, Arizona

Testing the hypothesis that controlled floods intended to drive the fluvial geomorphic and hydrologic processes necessary
for native tree recruitment will simultaneously destroy beaver dams.

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Project: Hydrological Impact of Beaver Habitat Restoration in the Milwaukee River Watershed

A comprehensive study evaluating how restoring beaver dams could significantly protect the city of Milwaukee from future flood vents and the significant cost savings of this nature-based management approach versus traditional flood prevention engineering.

Interactions between climate change and beavers in coastal streams

This project investigated the effects of climate on multiple aspects of river hydrology, including the interaction with expanding beaver populations in the Northeast. Our findings suggest that beavers increase water retentions, and sometimes flooding, in rivers which increases nitrogen removal.

Beaver: Nature’s ecosystem engineers

This review summarizes how beaver impact ecosystem structure and geomorphology, hydrology and water resources, water quality, freshwater ecology, and humans and society.

Beaver Dams and Overbank Floods Influence Groundwater–Surface Water Interactions of a Rocky Mountain Riparian Area

This study provides empirical evidence that beaver can influence hydrologic processes during the peak flow and low?flow periods on some streams, suggesting that beaver can create and maintain hydrologic regimes suitable for the formation and persistence of wetlands.