Research

This paper shows how restoring river–floodplain connectivity through Stage 0 approaches can transform incised, single-channel rivers into multi-threaded wetland riverscapes. Using UK case studies, it demonstrates major increases in wetted area and groundwater levels, highlighting the benefits of process-based restoration. It sets out six key lessons, emphasising uncertainty, context-specific design, stakeholder engagement, and the need for robust monitoring.

There is increasing interest in delivering greater resilience to climate change through integrated catchment management that includes NbS like riparian buffer strips, tree-planting and wetlands. We introduce three open, freely distributable models to help understanding efficacy and risk-reduction of buffer-strips at the plot (JUMP), waterbody (Fieldmouse), and national (HYPE) scales to help understand risk-reduction and help objectively quantify improvements in catchment resilience.

This report examines how marine and coastal heritage assets can be managed to enhance their ability to deliver natural capital benefits while preserving their historic significance. Through a rapid literature review, stakeholder engagement, and interdisciplinary analysis, the study identifies how marine and coastal heritage assets support ecosystem services, highlighting a range of management approaches to increase co-benefits, challenges and recommendations.

Storm clustering can generate successive coastal hazards, but short records limit assessment. Using a ~500‑year pre‑industrial model for Great Britain, this study shows that apparent clustering varies strongly over 50‑year periods and is likely underestimated, implying greater future risk under climate change and sea‑level rise.

An analysis of trends in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK, for durations 1 to 16 days. A spatial extreme value model is fitted to improve the detection of any signal of non-stationarity, test the explanatory power of climatic covariates and explore the spatial variability of trends. While most individual rain gauges show no significant trend, there is evidence of non-stationarity across the dataset as a whole.

This study offers practical recommendations for the application of different NbS interventions in hydraulic modelling and outlines the corresponding parameter ranges to consider. To demonstrate the real-world utility of these recommendations, a case study of the River Chew catchment (England) is presented, detailing pre- and post-intervention configurations wherein multiple candidate areas are converted to wetland and woodland using a HEC-RAS 2D model.