ALFAwetlands Midterm Conference
ALFAwetlands Midterm Conference took place during 21-24 of May 2024 at the Austrian-Hungarian Living Laboratory site. The main location of the Conference was the Neusiedl See – Seewinkel National Park Visitor Center in Illmitz, Austria.
The Conference aimed to review the ALFAwetlands implementation progress, present and exchange current results as well as to discuss further plans. Moreover, the project consortium interacted with national and local stakeholders, the broader public and raised awareness about the importance of wetlands restoration. In addition, meetings of the Advisory Board and Sister projects took place.
The Conference also included Field trips to the Hungarian and Austrian sites of the Living Lab to observe them and receive first-hand information about past and current restoration projects as well as to meet stakeholders and discuss further cooperation within ALFAwetlands.
Furthermore, two additional events took place: the ALFAwetlands Living Lab Open Day and the Living Labs Photo Exhibition which allowed visitors to get better acquainted with all 9 ALFAwetlands Living Labs, their activities, biodiversity and discuss citizens involvement into protection and restoration of wetlands.
ALFAwetlands in Austria
ALFAwetlands project is particularly important for Austria, since it contributes to the country´s Peatlands Strategy implementation, which has the aim to jointly develop new ways of preserving peatlands.
The Austrian Peatland Strategy 2030+ is intended to bring together all those who are involved with peatlands: in nature conservation, agriculture, forestry and water management, in planning and science, in administration and politics, landowners, managers, nature conservation organizations and many more.
ALFAwetlands research news
Under its 5 research Work Packages (WP) ALFAwetlands is working on:
- WP1 has advanced the geospatial knowledge base on European wetlands by developing comprehensive wetland databases and land use/land cover (LULC) maps for various catchments, which will be used in several subsequent analyses within ALFAwetlands
- The midterm results highlight significant theoretical and methodological contributions to knowledge co-production and sustainability transformations, along with deeper insights into the social-ecological contexts influencing inclusive wetland restoration
- WP3 has synthesized existing knowledge and gathered new experimental data to understand ecosystem responses, including biodiversity and climate change mitigation, across different wetland management regimes in temperate and boreal zones
- WP4 is focused on developing policy-relevant scenarios for climate change and biodiversity at the EU level
- WP5 has reviewed previous wetland restoration valuation studies and identified gaps, noting the challenges of presenting complex biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits.
We are glad to host ALFAwetlands conference at the Burgenland and discuss our further cooperation. Currently we are considering possible ALFAwetlands input for ground water modelling
says Philipp Reiner, Office of the Burgenland State Government.
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