Managed Retreat: Flood Mitigation, Floodplain Connectivity, & Climate Change - ERI Seminar - Nov 25

"Abstract: In a world of increasing flood magnitudes and frequencies on many rivers, one response has been the Netherland’s “Room for the River” policy, with other countries aspiring to that goal. In addition to mitigating flood damages, a Room for the River approach helps to protect and restore the hydrologic and ecological connectivity of floodplains. Society – and high-income societies in particular – struggle with accommodation of natural processes, but so-called “managed retreat” from floodplains has been implemented for more than a century, including at least 25 examples worldwide of wholesale community relocations. The number is significantly higher when studies include other, non-floodplain relocations, which provide broader and highly relevant lessons learned. Implementing these relocations is challenging, often politically fraught, and more expensive than simply rebuilding in place after a flood disaster, but managed retreat can provide a permanent solution to repetitive flooding as well as providing a host of potential add-on benefits to streams, floodplain, and other aquatic ecosystems. Managed retreat has been framed as the future of climate-change adaptation, although it is unclear how much relocation can be scaled up. But both successful and unsuccessful retreat projects provide lessons learned for adapting to the broad range of future climate threats. Biography: Nicholas Pinter is the Shlemon Professor of Applied Geosciences and Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California Davis. He and his students work on earth-surface processes, including river systems, coastal geomorphology, natural hazards, and adaptation policy and implementation. Nicholas is the author and editor of several books and has received awards including from the Lindbergh Foundation, von Humboldt Foundation, Fulbright Scholars Program, and from the European Commission. A recent research focus of his group is the adaptation to climate-driven changes such as sea-level rise and intensified flooding of both floodplains and coastal areas. Depending on local context, adaptation can involve mitigation of inundation risk either using structural protection or through avoidance and nature-based solutions. Nicholas and his group have studied communities that have undertaken, or plan to undertake, partial or complete relocation away from the risk of river or coastal flooding. That research has recently extended to management of volcanic emergencies through research in partnership with colleagues in Iceland."