Soils and Flooding: Targeted Briefings for Policy and Practice

In November, the Soil Health and Carbon Dynamics Topic Advisory Group hosted a workshop on Soils and Flooding where an expert panel assessed soil’s critical role in mitigating flood risk.

The discussion built on expert knowledge drawn from years of research and on-the-ground assessment and revealed a number of fundamental truths about the importance of soil type, structure and management in assessing flood risk and reducing soil erosion, run-off and muddy flooding. These are summarised here.

Alongside these universal facts, the workshop also highlighted a number of stakeholder-specific recommendations about soils and flooding – critical messages about the science, practice and policy of soils that different users – farmers, policy-makers and land-use planners should understand and reflect in their actions and decision-making.

These are summarised in targeted briefings here: