Visitors to the OTT Hydromet stand at the recent Floodex exhibition were provided with a free sapling, as part of the company’s efforts to promote tree planting as a way to capture carbon in the fight against climate change, and also as a natural flood management tool.
“As floods become more frequent and severe, many of our customers are starting to implement natural flood management (NFM) alongside more traditional engineering measures,” comments OTT MD Nigel Grimsley. “NFM seeks to ‘slow the flow’ – reducing peak flow, flow volumes and time to peak, especially in small catchments. As a manufacturer of precipitation, water level and flow monitoring equipment, we are intimately involved in measuring the success of such initiatives.”
Tree planting is just one of a number of NFM measures, but it can help in a number of ways. For example, rainfall is intercepted by the canopy of a tree and partly evaporates from the branch and leaf surfaces. Water falling onto soil under trees penetrates more quickly and more deeply than on open grassland, particularly where soils are compacted.
Trees naturally remove water from the soil leading to a significant reduction in pressure on drainage systems in urban areas and a reduction in flood risk in rural areas. In severe circumstances, trees can also provide a drag on flood water; acting as a porous barrier and thereby helping to slow the flow in upper regions of a catchment.
