Allan Water Project OfficerRiver Forth Fisheries Trust

- Flooding, NFM & fish

Lawrence Belleni

Floody hell!

They’re not going away…..

•Expect a 20% increase in flood peaks by 2080

•Europe- 1:100 flood expected to double in frequency within 3o years(Alfieri et al., 2015)

…However we’re talking fish

Two bold statements

•Flooding can be positive for fish

•Applying NFM provides catchment resilience & benefits to fish

Firstly, some benefits from flooding to fish

What we want? • Rivers with access to good habitat & a steady flow of

clean water

• Catchments that can manage precipitation (resilient)

In regards to flood risk to fish:

• Manageable flow velocity at bankfull

• Channel fish can survive in

Could NFM be the answer?

Other NFM- catchment resilience

Kinbuck & Bridge of Allan

Dunruchan Farm Peatland restoration Project

Why important?

Knaik Subcatchment

•Size 39km²

•Mostly bare & sheep grazed

•23% of flood peak (Halcrow-Cress Allan Water Scoping study, 2011)

Monitoring

•4 Pressure transducer flow gauges

•3 rain gauges

•Stirling University research site possibility?

Positives from the project

• Peatland contributes a store & slow pathway for water to leave the site

• Water quality improvements (DOC & POC)

• Part of a network of measures to manage precipitation

• Contributes to attenuating rapid flash floods

• Contributes to storing carbon and minimising impact of climate change

To conclude• Flooding can be beneficial to fish also

• NFM can be used to restore natural channel morphology and planform attenuating damaging bankfull flows

• NFM can increase a catchments resilience to precipitation events leading to bankfull flows

• NFM has multiple other benefits to fish and wider society also