Approach
Floodplains, wetlands, lowland forests, and riparian vegetation are critical water storage areas that also enhance local water quality by filtering pollutants, and sediments. Floodplain systems reduce the magnitude of flood events by physically slowing water velocity as it overtops channel banks, a process that regulates downstream water quantity and streamflow velocity (Dunne and Leopold 1978). Additionally, this regulation may improve base flow conditions that can buffer forested ecosystems during droughts (Isaak et al. 2015). Higher peak flows and longer dry periods are both occurring as the climate changes (Melillo et al. 2014; Huang et al. 2017), potentially increasing the importance of maintaining and restoring floodplain connectivity to stream networks.
Tactics
- Reconnect floodplains adjacent to incised river channels using stream restoration techniques to restore bankfull conditions (Yochum 2017; Rosgen 2007)
- Restore woody corridors in floodwater storage areas between riverbanks and levees to reduce floodwater damages (Allen et al. 2003)
- Maintain floodplains as undeveloped areas
- to be used only as floodwater storage.
- Use stream restoration techniques to improve hyporheic connections between channel and floodplain
- that restore stream channel hydrology and enhance groundwater recharge.
- Reconnect natural floodplain conditions and native habitats (such as bottomland forest
- wetlands
- and wet prairie and other habitats).
Strategy Text
This strategy seeks to sustain fundamental watershed functions, addressing the maintenance of and restoration of soil-water connections and hydrologic function. A shift in climate may amplify and exacerbate existing ecosystem challenges resulting from land-uses that have fragmented, altered or obstructed water flow pathways. Sustaining hydrologic and ecosystem functions into the future is likely to depend on management planning that seeks to maintain the long-term conveyance of water through unobstructed hydrologic pathways, most notably actions that promote the enhancement of water infiltration by porous forest soils (Creed et al. 2011; Furniss et al. 2010).
Citation
Shannon, P.D.; Swanston, C.W.; Janowiak, M.K.; Handler, S.D.; Schmitt, K.M.; Brandt, L.A.; Butler-Leopold, P.R.; Ontl, T.A. (in review). Adaptation Strategies and Approaches for Forested Watersheds. Ecological Applications.