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Land and runoff management

land-and-runoff

The way that rural land is managed, both in terms of the vegetative cover and the underlying soil, can greatly influence the pathways and speed by which incident rainfall reaches watercourses. Good land and soil management practices can help to minimise the generation of surface runoff and reduce downstream flood risk. Land and soil management for NFM involves cultivating soils to promote a good macro-structure and good organic matter content, thereby increasing soil infiltration and reducing surface flow generation and associated sediment transport. Surface water flooding is usually associated with heavy rainfall falling on impermeable surfaces, dry (capped) soils, frozen soils, or on a saturated catchment, causing overland flow to occur. This rainfall induced overland flow is quickly transferred to channels across the surface of the landscape due to the limited potential for soil infiltration. There is a consequent rapid rise in channel levels and a flashy catchment response to the rainfall. This high energetic flow of water across the landscape can result in erosion to soil and the transport of sediments (and sediment associated pollutants). Runoff management measures target these flow pathways, disconnecting them thereby attenuating the flow.

Case Studies

News & Events

Scotland’s Flood Resilience Conference 2025 was held in Edinburgh on the 28th and 29th January. The theme of the conference was on taking action to implement the Flood Resilience Stratergy....
The Environment Agency have published an update to the Working with Natural Processes evidence directory. This was developed in collaboration with JBA Consulting.  The Working with Natural...
SpongeScapes is a Horizon Europe project uniting 14 case studies across Europe to advance the understanding and implementation of sponge measures—nature-based solutions that restore...

Literature

What can be learnt from working with a community to identify what flood risk management measures are needed, are acceptable and which deliver the greatest multiple benefits?

Images

Videos

Embedded thumbnail for Eddleston Water, Tweed Catchment
Embedded thumbnail for Eddleston Water, Tweed Catchment