Climate change, Green Infrastructure and Natural Flood Management

Climate change is starting to affect us all and its impacts are becoming more visible around us day to day. Alongside extreme weather events causing increased flood, droughts, heat waves and wild fires there are subtler shifts happening across the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB that pose threats to the special qualities of this special landscape.

The green spaces, urban trees and rivers, streams and lakes make up a rich network of ‘Green Infrastructure’ around the AONB. By protecting, restoring and adding to this network we can support biodiversity, the health and wellbeing of local communities and help slow the flow of flood waters reducing the impact of major flood events.

Flooding affects many residents, businesses and visitors to the AONB and has a catastrophic impact on many of our important habitats. Natural flood management (NFM) approaches can help to reduce the impact of flood events while also creating new habitat, improving water quality and helping to tackle the ecological emergency. Often these NFM approaches are simply finding ways of slowing water down so that it can benefit the landscape it’s travelling through (by hydrating livestock, crops and plants) whilst reducing the negative impacts of too much water further downstream.

From this page you can find out more about the work we are doing to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies, to improve our Green Infrastructure and to reduce flooding impacts through Natural Flood Management projects across the AONB.

Landscape and Nature Recovery in a Changing Climate

Accessible Landscape and Nature Recovery in a Changing Climate
Climate change poses various threats to our Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, some of which we can prepare for and mitigate for. This document explores the AONB by landscape type identifying the key priorities and challenges each landscape faces before going on to identify how the changing climate may impact on the landscape, what mitigations we can take and then focussing on the key risks and the adaptations we can make to minimise the impact and severity of climate change in the AONB. This is a document for land managers, community groups, policy makers and anyone interested in the landscapes of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB.

Working with a Changing Climate – a guide to adaptation in the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB

Changing weather patterns and sea-level rise will have a direct impact on all parts of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB and the surrounding area. There could be positive and negative consequences, depending on how we respond. We need to adapt to climate change and address the causes, while conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the AONB.