Fear of water: floods, drought and the political threat to twenty years of conservation

Extreme floods and river values: A social–ecological perspective

“…Extreme floods encompass social and ecological values of risk, loss, naturalness, river change, disturbance, and river integrity. The downside of not integrating social and ecological values of extreme floods may be increasing “fear of water,” leading to pressure to “re‐tame the flood” through engineering‐based structural mitigation (Jeffries, ). Structural mitigation is an undesirable ecological value (Jeffries, ; Nienhuis, ), but it is perceived as a desirable social value to mitigate risk and loss.…”

“…Postdisaster policy reform may also introduce structural mitigation or flood risk management practices that address social values of loss and mitigation but which are detrimental to the ecological values of rivers (Bubeck et al, 2017;Jeffries, 2013). A classic example is the removal of woody debris from channels and floodplains following extreme floods, despite its importance in postflood ecological response (Parsons et al, 2005;Pettit & Naiman, 2005) floods may be increasing "fear of water," leading to pressure to "retame the flood" through engineering-based structural mitigation (Jeffries, 2013). Structural mitigation is an undesirable ecological value (Jeffries, 2013;Nienhuis, 2006), but it is perceived as a desirable social value to mitigate risk and loss.…”

“…A classic example is the removal of woody debris from channels and floodplains following extreme floods, despite its importance in postflood ecological response (Parsons et al, 2005;Pettit & Naiman, 2005) floods may be increasing "fear of water," leading to pressure to "retame the flood" through engineering-based structural mitigation (Jeffries, 2013). Structural mitigation is an undesirable ecological value (Jeffries, 2013;Nienhuis, 2006), but it is perceived as a desirable social value to mitigate risk and loss. Given that climate change is expected to increase the magnitude and frequency of extreme events and that these events will occur in increasingly modified river templates, extreme floods might become a threat to river ecosystems in the same way that they are a threat to social systems.…”

“…These policy innovation phases are part of lessons‐management cycles in emergency management (Eburn & Dovers, ), but for river scientists, they form important windows of opportunity to initiate policy‐relevant research on the ecological values of the event (Lindenmayer, Likens, & Franklin, ; Meitzen et al, ). Postdisaster policy reform may also introduce structural mitigation or flood risk management practices that address social values of loss and mitigation but which are detrimental to the ecological values of rivers (Bubeck et al, ; Jeffries, ). A classic example is the removal of woody debris from channels and floodplains following extreme floods, despite its importance in postflood ecological response (Parsons et al, ; Pettit & Naiman, ).…”

Flood, drought and the inter-annual variation to the number and size of ponds and small wetlands in an English lowland landscape over three years of weather extremes

“…The ponds in the pasture and arable fields were most numerous and extensive during the unusually wet summer and autumn of 2012. That year started with national concerns about drought but from the start of April unusually high overall rainfall including extreme individual events resulted in the wettest year on record in England, with concomitant economic losses and political fall-out (Jeffries, 2014). The extreme rainfall benefitted the Blakemoor ponds.…”