Making room for nature? Applying the Dutch Room for the River approach to flood risk management in Alberta, Canada

Bogdan, Eva; Beckie, Mary; Caine, Ken J.

doi:10.1080/15715124.2020.1723604

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The urban Atlantic coast in the United States is also well studied thanks to recent storms (e.g., Siders and Keenan 2020). Yet insights do not always transfer easily between jurisdictions (Bogdan et al 2022). Nova Scotia is a small and highly coastal province within the Atlantic region of Canada, comprising a peninsula joined to the rest of Canada through a narrow isthmus, one large island (Cape Breton), and thousands of smaller islands.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Climax thinking on the coast: a focus group priming experiment with coastal property owners about climate adaptation

Sherren

Sutton

Chappell

2022

Environmental Management

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Coastal communities face increasingly difficult decisions about responses to climate change. Armoring and defending the coast are being revealed as ineffective in terms of outcomes and cost, particularly in rural areas. Nature-based options include approaches that make space for coastal dynamism (e.g., through managed retreat) or leverage ecosystem services such as erosion control (e.g., by restoring coastal wetlands). Resistance can be strong to these alternatives to hard infrastructure. Nova Scotia, off Canada’s Atlantic coast, is a vulnerable coastal jurisdiction facing such decisions. The emerging climax thinking framework was used to design 14 experimental online focus groups. These focus groups explored how three priming treatments influenced discussions about adaptation options and urgency and quantitative pre/post-tests, compared with information-only control treatments. A future-focused priming strategy seemed most effective since it fostered discussions about duties to future generations. The altruism-focused priming strategy involved reflections of wartime mobilization and more recent collective action. It also worked but was more difficult to implement and potentially higher risk. Past-focused priming was counterproductive. Further research should test the future-focused and altruism-focused strategies among larger groups and in different jurisdictions, reducing some of the biases in our sample.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Climax thinking on the coast: a focus group priming experiment with coastal property owners about climate adaptation

Sherren

Sutton

Chappell

2022

Environmental Management

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“…Many former floodplains, which nowadays could be used for river restoration, e.g., local widening of watercourses or reconnecting rivers with previous river branches, were often claimed by settlement and agriculture. In other countries, the approach of making space for rivers also faces difficulties [19,20,24]. In general, research suggests that a broad inclusion of relevant stakeholders at different governmental levels is necessary to implement a flood risk management that aims to make more room for rivers [16,19].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has been conducted on the implementation of policies addressing 'making space for rivers' [15]. This includes research on the 'Room for River Directive' in the Netherlands [16][17][18], analysis of the practical implementation of giving space to rivers in Germany [19], and studying the application of the 'Room for River Directive' in Canada [20]. Furthermore, in the UK, there is research on the effectiveness of national planning policy in achieving compromises between space for rivers and space for people.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land Use in Flood-Prone Areas and Its Significance for Flood Risk Management—A Case Study of Alpine Regions in Austria

Junger

Hohensinner

Schroll

et al. 2022

Land

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Increasing flood damage has led to a rising importance of land use in flood risk management policies, commonly referred to as the spatial turn in flood risk management. This includes policies aiming at making space for rivers, which, in practice, lead to an increasing demand for land. Although research has been conducted on the variety of policies, the resulting land use conflicts in flood-prone areas have not been paid much attention to. This paper therefore analyses the current land use and its changes in Alpine flood-prone areas in Austria. The results show that space for rivers has been decreasing due to human activities (e.g., river straightening and channel narrowing) since the middle of the 19th century, and settlements have been expanding into flood-prone areas. Furthermore, the share of valuable agricultural land (which is important for food production) located in flood hazard zones is higher in more mountainous areas. Given the limited space for permanent settlement in Alpine regions, these land use changes exert pressure on the availability of land suitable for flood risk management. Therefore, making space for rivers as part of flood risk management policies faces considerable restrictions in Alpine areas.

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“…Most prominently, dikes are being reinforced, previously realigned oodplains are widened, and ood alleviation is often combined with ecosystem restoration 49 . Examples are found in Canada (Room for Nature 50 ; Freedom space for Rivers 51 ), the Netherlands (Room for the River 26,52 ), Belgium 53 and the United Kingdom 54 .…”

Section: Broader Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme River Flood Exposes Latent Erosion Risk From Human Control Measures

Barneveld,

Frings,

Mosselman

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of river floods. Flood flows not only cause direct damage by inundation, but also jeopardize infrastructure as a consequence of bank failure and river bed erosion processes that are poorly understood. The increased human exposure to floods has resulted in flood safety programs mainly focused on dikes and river widening. Here, we demonstrate and explain how extreme peak floods in embanked rivers, nonuniformly engineered to avoid flooding, can cause unexpected and hazardous erosion. The extreme and unanticipated 2021 flood in the Meuse Basin caused dozens of fatalities and a multibillion damage to infrastructure. Based on a large dataset and hydrodynamic modelling of the Meuse River, we unravel how multiple factors caused massive erosion in a river that was considered safe. Crucially, a recently implemented flood safety program widened the river, but created bottlenecks where infrastructure prevented widening. There, sixteen extreme scour holes formed during the 2021 flood, one exceeding 15 m deep. We infer the extreme scours are caused by the combined effect of tectonic uplift, gravel mining and riverbed incision in response to river realignment, which resulted in thinning of the gravel layer above fine Tertiary sediments. Gravel dunes formed and exposed the easily erodible sands in the troughs, which were rapidly suspended. Our findings demonstrate that subsurface heterogeneity, climate change induced discharge extremes and human control measures lead to a growing risk of uncontrolled erosion, being a peril both for infrastructure and for people living in former floodplains.

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Making room for nature? Applying the Dutch Room for the River approach to flood risk management in Alberta, Canada

Cited by 11 publications

References 28 publications

Climax thinking on the coast: a focus group priming experiment with coastal property owners about climate adaptation

Climax thinking on the coast: a focus group priming experiment with coastal property owners about climate adaptation

Land Use in Flood-Prone Areas and Its Significance for Flood Risk Management—A Case Study of Alpine Regions in Austria

Extreme River Flood Exposes Latent Erosion Risk From Human Control Measures

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