How effective are leaky dams at reducing the downstream flood peak?
We supported research at the University of Leeds by Zora van Leeuwen, who recently completed her PhD and has published two papers in the Journal of Hydrology.
Zora’s research focused on how to quantify the impacts of natural flood management (NFM), specifically leaky dams in upland catchments, on the downstream flood peak magnitude. The effectiveness of the leaky dams was monitored using a before-after-control-impact (BACI) study on three streams in the Coverdale catchment in the Yorkshire Dales.
Figure 1. Location of the headwaters of the River Cover, Coverdale, North Yorkshire, UK, and the nearest Environment Agency operated rainfall gauge. The inset shows the location of the studied streams within the Coverdale catchment and the positions of the water level gauges are indicated using black points.
The first paper (Part 1) explores a novel application of data-based time series methods to help overcome barriers to quantifying the impacts of NFM measures from hydrological timeseries data.
The second paper (Part 2) quantifies the effectiveness of leaky dams on reducing flood peak magnitude.
Both papers are open access, so anyone can read them for free.
Citations
Z.R. van Leeuwen, M.J. Klaar, M.W. Smith, L.E. Brown, Quantifying the natural flood management potential of leaky dams in upland catchments, Part I: A data-based modelling approach, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 628, 2024, 130448, ISSN 0022-1694.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.130448
Z.R. van Leeuwen, M.J. Klaar, M.W. Smith, L.E. Brown, Quantifying the natural flood management potential of leaky dams in upland catchments, Part II: Leaky dam impacts on flood peak magnitude,
Journal of Hydrology, Volume 628, 2024, 130449, ISSN 0022-1694.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.130449
Funding information
Zora’s research was an Industrial CASE Studentship funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with the support of JBA Trust and the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust.
