Living Landscapes and flood management

Nature’s Place for Water

The Wildlife Trusts’ report, Nature’s place for water, reflects on last year’s summer floods and examines how The Wildlife Trusts are working with nature to provide sustainable solutions to flood management for the 21st century. Restoring some of the natural spaces for floodwater in our landscape through creating wetlands and using sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) will reduce the risk of flooding. Not only that but working with nature, rather than against it, can bring many other benefits, such as improved water quality and greater biodiversity. It includes examples of Trust projects which are aiming to reduce flood risk through restoring natural systems and illustrates how a catchment-wide approach to flood management could work.

Click here to download a copy of the report

WATER AND WETLANDS

The UK climate is ideally suited to the formation of wetland habitats and although, much of our wetland heritage has been lost the British Isles still has some of the finest examples of wetland habitats in Europe.

Types of wetland habitats include:

Bogs

The UK is particularly important for its bog habitat.

Scotland contains over 10,500 sq km of blanket bog and the Flow Country in Scotland is probably the largest single expanse of blanket bog in the world at 4,000 square kilometres. The largest complex of lowland raised bog in England is Thorne, Hatfield, Goole and Croole Moors, although, Thorne and Hatfield have been badly damaged by industrial peat workings since 1951.

To find out about our peatland campaign click here.

Standing waters
Ironically, another of the UK's most famous wetlands visited by thousands of people each year, The Norfolk Broads in East Anglia, were formed from the remnants of medieval peat diggings, which were flooded as a result of land subsidence and rising sea level. They contain a variety of freshwater habitats including open water, rivers, fens, reedbeds and freshwater grazing marshes.

Another wetland area, particularly important for UK tourism, is the Lake District in Cumbria, which houses some of the UK's most famous lakes - Windermere, Ullswater, Bassenthwaite and Coniston Water. The Erne catchment in Northern Ireland, also housing two of the largest and important lakes in the UK, Lough Neagh and the lower and upper Lough Erne. Two other large and important mesotrophic lakes are Lough Melvin and Lough MacNean with bridge the international border between northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Reedbeds and Fens
Key reed-bed and fen areas in the UK include the Tay estuary in Scotland, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads and Far Ings along the Humber Estuary. Redgrave and Lopham Fens on the Norfolk and Suffolk border are particularly famous fen habitats.

Wet Heath
Heathland is another key UK habitat.

The New Forest in Hampshire is important for its wet heath and valley bogs (among other habitats) has been nominated as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and a Special Protection Area (SPA) and a Ramsar Site.
Purple moor grass and rush pasture can be found in south west England, south west Scotland and Northern Ireland. Southern Wales is particularly notable for this habitat. The Rhos Pastures in Wales is a beautiful, but fragmented range of purple moor grass habitat which extends from the middle to the north west peninsula of Wales covering an estimated 24,000 hectares.

Wet woodland
Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Suffolk and the Vale of Aylesbury in Oxfordshire are some of the most important areas for the last remaining remnants of wet woodland in the UK.

Rivers and streams
UK rivers include in the Thames which extends from across the South of England. The Forth, the Dee, The Tay and the Tweed in Scotland. In Northern England, the River Eden, the Derwent, the Erk, the Don, the Ouse and the Mersey. In the Midlands, the Severn, the Trent and the Avon. In East Anglia, the Yare, the Stour and the Little Ouse. In Wales, the Teifi, the Dee, the Usk and the Wye. In the South East, the Medway, the Rother the Stour and the Thames. In the South West the river Tamar, the Tow, the Exe and the Kennet. Chalk streams like the Wiltshire Avon, the Frome, the Itchen and the Wylye in the South.

Wet grassland
Central southern England is particularly important damp grassland areas. In South West England, there is the Somerset Levels and Moors and The Avon Valley. The Somerset Levels and Moors is an area of South West England made up of wet peat, fenland with areas of open water, wet grassland, streams and a network of ditches created when the land was first drained for agriculture.

In the South, The Test Valley and the Itchen Valley are also areas famous for their grasslands. In the South East, wet grassland can be found along the Essex Coast and the North Kent Marshes. The Ouse Washes and the Nene Washes are key areas. In the North of England, you find the wet grassland areas around the Lake District and the lower Derwent Valley. In Scotland, the Insh Marshes and Loch Lomond are important areas. In Wales, wet grassland can be found along the Dyfi Estuary.