The interest of wetlands to prevent pluvial flooding

Abstract

The new "management of aquatic environments and flood prevention" (GEMAPI) competence, part of the Environmental policy, establishes the coherence of actions aimed at reducing the risk of flooding and the management of aquatic environments within the scope of the EWFD (European Water Framework Directive). It opens a new perspective on the management of spaces including terrestrial. This is due to the fact that aquatic environments are the final receivers of human activity undertaken on hillslopes. In response to a question from the government at the end of 2017 on the "implementation of the transfer of water and sanitation competencies to the communities of municipalities", the Ministry of the Interior stressed that the management of runoff and erosion outside of sewerage systems did indeed fall within the remit of GEMAPI. In this article, we look at how flood prevention and soil erosion by runoff can be organized in the space of a small and rapidly changing watershed, through wetlands at the basin head.