Adaptation to flood risk: Results of international paired flood event studies

As flood impacts are increasing in large parts of the world, understanding the primary drivers of changes in risk is essential for effective adaptation. To gain more knowledge on the basis of empirical case studies, we analyze eight paired floods, that is, consecutive flood events that occurred in the same region, with the second flood causing significantly lower damage. These success stories of risk reduction were selected across different socioeconomic and hydro-climatic contexts. The potential of societies to adapt is uncovered by describing triggered societal changes, as well as formal measures and spontaneous processes that reduced flood risk. This novel approach has the potential to build the basis for an international data collection and analysis effort to better understand and attribute changes in risk due to hydrological extremes in the framework of the IAHSs Panta Rhei initiative. Across all case studies, we find that lower damage caused by the second event was mainly due to significant reductions in vulnerability, for example, via raised risk awareness, preparedness, and improvements of organizational emergency management. Thus, vulnerability reduction plays an essential role for successful adaptation. Our work shows that there is a high potential to adapt, but there remains the challenge to stimulate measures that reduce vulnerability and risk in periods in which extreme events do not occur

Adaptation to flood risk - results of international paired flood event studies

As flood impacts are increasing in large parts of the world, understanding the primary drivers of changes in risk is essential for effective adaptation. To gain more knowledge on the basis of empirical case studies, we analyze eight paired floods, that is, consecutive flood events that occurred in the same region, with the second flood causing significantly lower damage. These success stories of risk reduction were selected across different socioeconomic and hydro‐climatic contexts. The potential of societies to adapt is uncovered by describing triggered societal changes, as well as formal measures and spontaneous processes that reduced flood risk. This novel approach has the potential to build the basis for an international data collection and analysis effort to better understand and attribute changes in risk due to hydrological extremes in the framework of the IAHSs Panta Rhei initiative. Across all case studies, we find that lower damage caused by the second event was mainly due to significant reductions in vulnerability, for example, via raised risk awareness, preparedness, and improvements of organizational emergency management. Thus, vulnerability reduction plays an essential role for successful adaptation. Our work shows that there is a high potential to adapt, but there remains the challenge to stimulate measures that reduce vulnerability and risk in periods in which extreme events do not occur

Early above- and below-ground responses of subboreal conifer seedlings to various levels of deciduous canopy removal

We examined the growth of understory conifers, following partial or complete deciduous canopy removal, in a field study established in two regions in Canada. In central British Columbia, we studied the responses of three species (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca (Beissn.) Franco, Picea glauca (Moench) Voss x Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm., and Abies lasiocarpa (Hook.) Nutt.), and in northwestern Quebec, we studied one species (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.). Stem and root diameter and height growth were measured 5 years before and 3 years after harvesting. Both root and stem diameter growth increased sharply following release but seedlings showed greater root growth, suggesting that in the short term, improvement in soil resource capture and transport, and presumably stability, may be more important than an increase in stem diameter and height growth. Response was strongly size dependent, which appears to reflect greater demand for soil resources as well as higher light levels and greater tree vigour before release for taller individuals. Growth ratios could not explain the faster response generally attributed to true fir species or the unusual swift response of spruces. Good prerelease vigour of spruces, presumably favoured by deciduous canopies, could explain their rapid response to release

Review article: Drought as a continuum – memory effects in interlinked hydrological, ecological, and social systems

Droughts are often long-lasting phenomena, without a distinct start or end and with impacts cascading across sectors and systems, creating long-term legacies. Nevertheless, our current perceptions and management of droughts and their impacts are often event-based, which can limit the effective assessment of drought risks and reduction of drought impacts. Here, we advocate for changing this perspective and viewing drought as a hydrological–ecological–social continuum. We take a systems theory perspective and focus on how “memory” causes feedback and interactions between parts of the interconnected systems at different timescales. We first discuss the characteristics of the drought continuum with a focus on the hydrological, ecological, and social systems separately, and then we study the system of systems. Our analysis is based on a review of the literature and a study of five cases: Chile, the Colorado River basin in the USA, northeast Brazil, Kenya, and the Rhine River basin in northwest Europe. We find that the memories of past dry and wet periods, carried by both bio-physical (e.g. groundwater, vegetation) and social systems (e.g. people, governance), influence how future drought risk manifests. We identify four archetypes of drought dynamics: impact and recovery, slow resilience building, gradual collapse, and high resilience–big shock. The interactions between the hydrological, ecological, and social systems result in systems shifting between these types, which plays out differently in the five case studies. We call for more research on drought preconditions and recovery in different systems, on dynamics cascading between systems and triggering system changes, and on dynamic vulnerability and maladaptation. Additionally, we advocate for more continuous monitoring of drought hazards and impacts, modelling tools that better incorporate memories and adaptation responses, and management strategies that increase societal and institutional memory. This will help us to better deal with the complex hydrological–ecological–social drought continuum and identify effective pathways to adaptation and mitigation

Panta Rhei benchmark dataset: socio-hydrological data of paired events of floods and droughts

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions and feedbacks in complex human-water systems leading to flood and drought impacts. Here we present a benchmark dataset containing socio-hydrological data of paired events, i.e., two floods or two droughts that occurred in the same area. The 45 paired events occurred in 42 different study areas and cover a wide range of socio-economic and hydro-climatic conditions. The dataset is unique in covering both floods and droughts, in the number of cases assessed, and in the quantity of socio-hydrological data. The benchmark dataset comprises: 1) detailed review style reports about the events and key processes between the two events of a pair; 2) the key data table containing variables that assess the indicators which characterise management shortcomings, hazard, exposure, vulnerability and impacts of all events; 3) a table of the indicators-of-change that indicate the differences between the first and second event of a pair. The advantages of the dataset are that it enables comparative analyses across all the paired events based on the indicators-of-change and allows for detailed context- and location-specific assessments based on the extensive data and reports of the individual study areas. The dataset can be used by the scientific community for exploratory data analyses e.g. focused on causal links between risk management, changes in hazard, exposure and vulnerability and flood or drought impacts. The data can also be used for the development, calibration and validation of socio-hydrological models. The dataset is available to the public through the GFZ Data Services (Kreibich et al. 2023, link for review: https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/panmetaworks/review/923c14519deb04f83815ce108b48dd2581d57b90ce069bec9c948361028b8c85/).</p

Swedish immersion in the early years in Finland

Immersion education in Finland is a one-way (monolingual) early total Swedish programme for Finnish-speaking students. This immersion provision is offered at kindergarten level (ages 3–5), at preschool (age 6) and at primary levels (grades 1–9). Here, a brief synthesis of Finnish research studies on the early years in Swedish immersion is first provided, reviewing results from a number of quantitative and qualitative research studies. In order to present a comprehensive view of the Finnish context, both the kindergarten and preschool environments are analysed as contexts for early second-language learning and teaching. The second part of this article presents results from a recent Finnish study of immersion in kindergarten, where analyses of dialogue sequences make it possible to examine in depth how immersion children in Finland learn their new language in everyday situations within immersion settings. Examples illustrate the importance of the educator's explicit verbalisations of every joint activity and shared context. When the educator continuously puts into words the actions jointly focused upon by child and adult, she provides meaningful L2 input and, at the same time, promotes children's understanding of daily activities. The excerpts also show developments in children's emerging L2 utterances, from recycled Swedish language items to spontaneous L2 use

Arctic terrestrial hydrology : A synthesis of processes, regional effects, and research challenges

Terrestrial hydrology is central to the Arctic system and its freshwater circulation. Water transport and water constituents vary, however, across a very diverse geography. In this paper, which is a component of the Arctic Freshwater Synthesis, we review the central freshwater processes in the terrestrial Arctic drainage and how they function and change across seven hydrophysiographical regions (Arctic tundra, boreal plains, shield, mountains, grasslands, glaciers/ice caps, and wetlands). We also highlight links between terrestrial hydrology and other components of the Arctic freshwater system. In terms of key processes, snow cover extent and duration is generally decreasing on a pan-Arctic scale, but snow depth is likely to increase in the Arctic tundra. Evapotranspiration will likely increase overall, but as it is coupled to shifts in landscape characteristics, regional changes are uncertain and may vary over time. Streamflow will generally increase with increasing precipitation, but high and low flows may decrease in some regions. Continued permafrost thaw will trigger hydrological change in multiple ways, particularly through increasing connectivity between groundwater and surface water and changing water storage in lakes and soils, which will influence exchange of moisture with the atmosphere. Other effects of hydrological change include increased risks to infrastructure and water resource planning, ecosystem shifts, and growing flows of water, nutrients, sediment, and carbon to the ocean. Coordinated efforts in monitoring, modeling, and processing studies at various scales are required to improve the understanding of change, in particular at the interfaces between hydrology, atmosphere, ecology, resources, and oceans