Banked realignment: a case study from the Humber Estuary, UK Available to Purchase

The majority of realignment schemes undertaken in the UK to date have involved breached realignment. However, banked realignment schemes can offer benefits in terms of creating habitats that have greater physical and biological connectivity with the wider estuary. These benefits are illustrated through a case study of a scheme at Welwick in the Humber Estuary, which is one of the few recent managed realignment schemes to involve the wholesale removal of the fronting flood embankment rather than the creation of breaches. In this example, the scheme design was heavily influenced by the requirement to create a compensatory mudflat habitat and, in this regard, the methods used to assess the future evolution of the scheme are described. The paper goes on to discuss the generic design issues relevant to managed realignment schemes at other locations, including the target habitat to be created. It is suggested that the benefits of banked realignment schemes, in terms of delivering more sustainable estuary morphologies, merit increasing consideration by developers in the future.