Donate Take Action. Conservation Wildlife Facts. Bryn Fluharty March 12, Written by Bryn Fluharty. Recent Popular. Conservation , People and Wildlife. Students and Nature. Students and Nature , Wildlife Facts. Garden Habitats , Wildlife Facts.
Wildlife Facts. Never miss a story. Levees and floodwalls unnaturally keep rivers within a narrow channel. This causes water to rise higher and flow faster than it would normally. This leads to more powerful and rapid flooding downstream, or creates a bottleneck which causes flooding upstream.
Engineered structures can provide a false sense of security about living in a floodplain. People assume a levee will always protect them and are not always aware of how dangerous it can be. Levees separate the river from its floodplain, starving the floodplain of water. This reduces the health of floodplain ecosystems and reduces their ability to hold water during floods.
Dams and other structures block the flow of sediment and nutrients to areas downstream, which need them to support life. Giving rivers more room to accommodate large floods is the best way to keep communities safe.
Whenever possible, floodplain restoration should be a go-to solution. Across the country, communities are realizing that natural floodplains are important to the health, safety, and prosperity of their citizens. Floodplains also provide clean and abundant water supplies, places to recreate, and healthy habitat for fish and wildlife. American Rivers is helping communities reconnect rivers to their floodplains by promoting projects that reconnect rivers to their floodplains.
Communities can restore floodplains by:. Moving a levee further back from a river can provide more room for a river to accommodate flood waters while still protecting vital infrastructure. If there is no infrastructure you can remove the entire levee or put holes in it to allow water to access the floodplain during a flood. Levee setbacks have been used on the Yakima River, Missouri River, Maquoketa River and many others in order to accommodate flood water and keep people safe.
Floodplains can also be disconnected from rivers as a river erodes deeper and deeper into its channel. By raising the river bed or excavating the river banks, we can recreate the ability of a river to flow onto its floodplain. Moving flood-prone homes and buildings to higher ground is a life-saving action that can also be the first step to restoring floodplains to more natural habitat or recreational space. Even when rivers are connected to floodplains, the habitat may be degraded or overrun with invasive species.
Planting native plants can bring back the native habitat with is better able to support native fish and wildlife. Communities like Ottawa, Illinois are restoring natural floodplain habitat as a component of their regional floodplain management strategy.
American Rivers works with local, regional, and state agencies and private landowners to protect and restore rivers, floodplains and wetlands. We educate decision makers and the public about the value and importance of:. We promote federal polices and plans that recognize healthy rivers and floodplains as being our best flood protection.
We help decision makers and the public understand how rivers and floodplains nurture life and provide a bounty of benefits, naturally and freely. Multiple-benefit solutions. We seek river restoration solutions that break down silos and solve multiple water resources problems, like flood management and fish habitat.
By giving rivers room and restoring healthy floodplains, we can keep communities safe and improve the health of our rivers. Floods can be inconvenient.
Large floods can be downright disastrous. Floods A flood happens when heavy rains or melting snow cause a river to rise and flow over its banks. Columbia, SC, Riverfront and washed out roads during flood event Heavy rains over a short period of time can suddenly cause a flood. Natural floodplains provide flood risk reduction benefits by slowing runoff and storing flood water.
They also provide other benefits of considerable economic, social, and environmental value that are often overlooked when local land-use decisions are made. They are expensive and often not an option in LICs.
However, there are disadvantages to using soft engineering as a river flood management strategy. The techniques are not necessarily reliable and may not always be effective so meaning that some floods do still occur and consequently people may lose possessions and businesses may be adversely affected. Hard engineering defences are considered more expensive than soft engineering defences.
They have a shorter life span and many shift the problems experienced to alternative locations.
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