Project approaches

Project approaches

Project impact

Examine the potential and effectiveness of wetland restoration in supporting transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society and economy, through interdisciplinary advancement of environmental, ecosystem, climate and life sciences, social sciences, and economics.

Contribute to EU policy implementation supporting climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation (EU restoration targets), increase biodiversity (Convention on Biological Diversity, Aichi Biodiversity Targets) and contribute to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG13 Climate Action, SDG15 Life on Land).

Support assessments e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Intergovernmental Science (IPBES), land use, land-use change & forestry (LULUCF) and national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, to provide improved knowledge on the status of European wetlands beyond state-of-art.

Provide improved methods, models and knowledge to project greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and removals from wetlands and the LULUCF sector → enable more accurate GHGE reporting.

Quantify the GHG abatement potential and biodiversity and other ecosystem services (BES) of wetland restoration at local and EU levels → leading to increased use of wetland restoration as a GHGE mitigation tool.

Address the needs of the biodiversity comprehensively by mapping, monitoring, and assessing BES and restoration efforts for wetlands → produce guidebooks, tools, training → support climate-wise restoration.

Contribute evidence on BES provided by restored wetlands by producing harmonised and spatially explicit data on effects of restoration approaches on CC mitigation and BES → enabling authorities, managers and policymakers to design more accurate and effective wetland strategies.

Provide improved assessment of added value of wetland restoration approaches e.g. by identifying the most successful restoration measures in European wetlands → promote best practices of wetland restoration.

Analyse how approaches related to wetlands are affected by different CC scenarios.

Project structure

The overall objective of the WP1 is to improve the current state of geospatial knowledge on wetlands, their use and degradation in Europe. On this basis, priority lists and maps for wetland restoration or conservation (with a focus on peatlands) will be developed, considering restoration objectives related to greenhouse gas emission reduction, biodiversity, ecosystem services, protection and restoration. In the first phase, we are focusing on developing robust, multi-scale spatial wetland data, primarily by identifying, assessing, and synthesizing available information and, in part, by creating new GIS data. To achieve widespread use of these data, the needs of the respective policy instruments and end users of wetland geospatial data will be explored and considered.

WP2´s overall objective is to design and evaluate joint learning processes and how they can help build individual and collective agency, and to support more inclusive, community-engaging restoration efforts. This will be achieved by testing and evaluating real-world, facilitated co-creation processes embedded in different national and social, ecological and economic contexts. WP2 both contribute to the scientific understanding of joint learning processes and how they can be designed, and to the professional practice of facilitated knowledge co-creation.

WP3 aims to strengthen existing knowledge and gather fresh experimental data to enhance our understanding of how ecosystems in temperate and boreal climates respond to different wetland management and restoration practices. This will be achieved by examining ecosystem reactions across various stages during the restoration, including their early establishment, intermediate, and stable states. Our focus will predominantly be on wetlands managed as forests, croplands, grasslands, or wetlands themselves. By studying these diverse approaches, we aim to gain comprehensive insights into their impacts on biodiversity and climate change.  

WP4´s overall objective is to gain understanding of the potential impacts of upscaled wetland restoration options on biodiversity and ecosystem services provision, as well as changes in BES provision at the EU level for various policy-relevant time periods and the most policy-relevant climate change mitigation (e.g. 2⁰C) and biodiversity targets. This will be achieved by soft linking and scaling specialized site-based models in LLs with regional and EU level integrated modelling tools. Following a scenario co-creation process [WP2], BES provision will be quantified for the baseline scenario, wetland restoration scenarios, and other relevant mitigation scenarios in the agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) sector (e.g. reforestation, land protection), including climate change effects.

WP5’s overall objective is to gain an understanding of the societal impacts of wetland restoration, especially on biodiversity and ecosystem services benefits and costs of different wetland restoration approaches and wellbeing impacts at local, national, and EU levels. The benefits of the wetland restoration are estimated based on PPGIS and stated preference surveys targeted at regional and national levels. Stated preference methods are also used to analyze the landowners’ willingness to implement the restoration measures. The economic and social impacts of wetland restoration at EU level are estimated with GLOBIOM, which is a partial-equilibrium model representing impacts of land use and land use change for different activities. WP5 builds on information on restoration measures and effects of restoration on BES provision [WP1, WP3, WP4] and stakeholder engagement [WP2]. WP5 will contribute to effective and efficient wetland restoration approaches/strategies.

WP6’s overall objective is to maximise the transformative impact among a wide range of relevant participants and target audiences, via extensive dissemination, communication, knowledge exchange, and exploitation of outcomes. Specific objectives are to:

• Effectively distribute in order to ensure sustainability of project results and build stakeholder capacity;

• Ensure the project’s feasibility and applicability to wetland restoration and sustainable management stakeholders via co-developed approaches, solutions, and a comprehensive set of effective DEC activities;

• Support active, cross-cutting communication of project activities/outputs by participants to the wider public, media, and stakeholders through innovative citizen science practices;

• Ensure timely dissemination and sustainability of outputs through a wide range of stakeholders with specific exploitation interests (EC, Member States, national/local administrators, landowners and managers, restoration practitioners, knowledge brokers, co-creation facilitators), and support uptake and upscaling of exploitable outputs;

• Promote open science and management of research results and other outputs according to FAIR principles, while protecting the intellectual property of relevant exploitable outputs.

WP7’s overall objective is to ensure successful implementation and completion of ALFAwetlands, including governance bodies, scientific coordination, and carrying out the work in Living Labs, and to create working environment that supports collaboration and co-creation.

Translate »