Natural flooding in Lužnice floodplain - a holistics approach

Natural flooding was analysed in the Lužnice River floodplain in a holistic approach. Benefits of natural floooding can be summarised as folows: 1.Water retention is increased due to the soil absorption, evaporation, evapotranspiration, filling of oxbows, pools and natural depressions and finally the space between the river terraces. Real flood event are analysed here in terms of water distribution among these processes. 2. Natural flooding reduces the loss of ionts from the watershed by slowing the river outflow and loss of carbon loss by slowing the decomposition processes. 3. Flooding creates and maintains floodplain geodiversity by re-forming of floodplain geomorphology and keps its biodiversity by inoculation of biota into the floodplain subsystems and differentation of its impact on these subsystems. For these reasons, maintaining and enhancing of natural flooding seems to be a prerequisite of sustainable management of riverine landscape