Table of contents
- 0. Flood Risk - general comments
- 1. Executive summary
- 2. Introduction
- 2.1 Floods in Europe
- 2.2 Environmental aspects of floods and floodplains
- 2.3 Floodplain areas areas
- 2.4 Strategic flood risk management
- 2.5 Outline and reading guidance
- 3 Status of Europe's floodplains
- 3.1 Environmental importance of floodplains
- 3.2 Status of Europe’s floodplains: remaining areas and environmental quality
- 3.3 Anthropogenic Drivers and Pressures
- 3.4 Floodplain management and restoration
- 4 Policy developments and implementation
- 4.1 European policies influencing the management of floods and floodplains
- 4.2 Flood risk management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction
- 4.3 Gaps in knowledge and policy integration
- 5 Conclusions
- 5.1 Data on floods and floodplains
- 5.2 Floodplains in Europe
- 5.3 Coordination of flood risk management with adjacent policy fields
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- References
3 Status of Europe's floodplains
Europe’s floodplains once covered wide stretches along the European rivers. Cleared for agriculture and completely changed through urban expansion and flood control structures, only fractions of floodplains remain. Some of the largest and best-preserved floodplains in Europe are found along the Danube, the Sava, Drava and March River in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia (Klimo, and Hager, 2001; Lazowski, and Schwarz, 2014; Mölder, and Schneider, 2010; Španjol, et al., 1999), and along the Oder (WWF Germany 2000) and the Elbe (Scholz, et al., 2005) in Germany. One of the last morphologically-intact river corridors in the Alps is the Tagliamento River in Italy (Bertoldi, et al., 2009; Tockner, et al., 2003). The Allier and Durance River in France are examples of morphologically intact river sections with a high connectivity to the surrounding floodplains, as are the Biebrza and Narew valleys in northeast Poland.