Free course

An introduction to floodplain meadows

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This free course, An introduction to floodplain meadows, explores how these traditional landscapes can deliver a range of nature-based solutions that will improve our environment. The course will help you to learn about this unique environment, increasing your ecological knowledge, developing your skills in critical reasoning, and offering you an opportunity to contribute to future research priorities.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

describe the features of a floodplain meadow
list the range of ecosystem services they offer
assess the relative merits of management approaches to maximise ecosystem-service delivery
identify the components needed to successfully restore them.

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First Published: 13/03/2025

Updated: 13/03/2025

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Course content

- Course introduction
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This free course, An introduction to floodplain meadows, explores how these traditional landscapes can deliver a range of nature-based solutions that will improve our environment. The course will help you to learn about this unique environment, increasing your ecological knowledge, developing your skills in critical reasoning, and offering you an opportunity to contribute to future research priorities.There are seven sessions in this course, each requiring between 10 and 15 minutes of study ...
- Acknowledgements
- Session1Session 1: Biodiversity
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In this session you will learn about floodplain meadow species and plant communities, and the importance of biodiversity in resilience.Biodiversity is a term that encompasses all the variation in living things. Maintaining and enhancing biodiversity is important because greater variation gives living systems more resilience. If an extreme event occurs, a system with fifty different species may remain stable because while some may fail, others will survive to fill the gaps; whereas a system ...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Biodiversity: an introduction
- 2 Species
- 3 Plant communities
- Summary of Session 1
- Acknowledgements
- Session2Session 2: Climate change
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Climate change is likely to make weather extremes – such as heat waves, floods and drought – more frequent and more intense, strongly affecting our landscapes and livelihoods. To limit these effects, mitigating the causes such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and adapting to the effects, such as living with floods, is necessary. Floodplain meadows have an important role to play in both mitigation and adaptation, which you will learn about in this session.This session is the second of ...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Climate change: an introduction
- 2 Meadows and climate change mitigation: soil carbon
- 3 Meadows and climate change adaptation and resilience
- Summary of Session 2
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session3Session 3: Flood risk
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Start by watching the following video which introduces this session.This session is the third of seven sessions on different but related topics that you might be interested in. The sessions in this course are as follows:Session 1: Biodiversity [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] Session 2: Climate changeSession 3: Flood riskSession 4: Food securitySession 5: Connection to natureSession 6: Water qualitySession 7: Next steps
- Learning outcomes
- 1 The role of soil
- 2 Hydrographs and flood terminology explained
- 3 The role of floodplain meadows
- Summary of Session 3
- Acknowledgements
- Session4Session 4: Food security
- Current section:
  Introduction
  The way we produce food has changed immeasurably over the past 100 years, moving from locally grown food from small scale mixed farms to globally sourced, intensive, monoculture-based farming with fast moving supply chains. This model, in addition to raising some concerns around environmental impact and animal welfare, has important implications for our food security.With a changing climate, crop yields are likely to become more variable, and world markets less predictable. Therefore food ...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Food security and its challenges
- 2 Farming in floodplains
- 3 Floodplain farming for the future: meadows
- Summary of Session 4
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session5Session 5: Connection to nature
- Current section:
  Introduction
  A strong connection to nature is recognised as being beneficial to our health and wellbeing, and as a driver for pro-environmental behaviour. The natural world can provide a space for de-stressing, exercise, mental wellbeing, learning and wonder. For much of human history, people lived close to nature and the seasonal cycles, with an intimate knowledge of how the natural world provides us with what we need to live. However, most of us now live in an increasingly urbanised and industrial ...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Nature connections
- 2 Eco-anxiety
- 3 Actions
- Summary of Session 5
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session6Session 6: Water quality
- Current section:
  Introduction
  The UK’s increasing population and agricultural intensification are causing more nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) to enter water courses. Nutrients reduce the biodiversity of aquatic and floodplain habitats. They promote the growth of algae and blue-green bacteria, which make the water unsafe to swim in or drink. In this session, you will consider water quality in terms of its nutrient concentrations, exploring how we can manage floodplains to trap and use nutrients in a positive way, ...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Water quality: an introduction
- 2 Nutrient cycling in floodplains
- 3 Floodplain meadows as a tool to reduce nutrients
- Summary of Session 6
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session7Session 7: Next steps
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In studying one or more of the preceding six sessions of this course, you have been introduced to ideas about climate change, biodiversity, connections to nature, water quality, flood risk and food security, all in the context of floodplain meadows.In each case, the authors have offered an overview of current knowledge. Each of them could be further informed by new research. This session is the last of seven sessions on different but related topics that you might be interested in. The ...
- 1 Research priorities
- 2 Actions
- 3 Sources of further information
- Tell us what you think
- References
- Acknowledgements

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