WET HORIZONS: Upgrading knowledge and solutions to fast track wetland restoration across Europe
Wetlands and its current state
Wetlands are one of the critical ecosystems covering up to 6% of the world’s land surface. Wetlands largely contribute towards biodiversity support, water quality improvement, flood abatement, and carbon management. However, currently we are left with only half of the global wetland area which is threaten by rapid degradation due to climate change and anthropogenic activities such as land use change, drainage etc. With 10% of the European area being wetlands, less than 20% of this remains in good ecological condition making wetlands as endangered ecosystems.
The WET HORIZONS project
WET HORIZONS project is an European project which aims at enhancing the knowledge required to tackle the challenges faced during restoration of wetlands, with a focus on biodiversity. WET HORIZONS aims to improve the current data availability from various peatlands, floodplains and coastal wetlands through extensive mapping, de novo data collection and earth observations based modelling. With a total 14 partners across Europe, WET HORIZONS is an extensive project which aims to deliver and develop a series of guidelines and tools to assess the best possible restoration measures from a technical, ecological and socio economic aspects.
GLOBIO and WET HORIZONS
GLOBIO is responsible for adapting the Bioscore3.0 model for wetlands across Europe. Bioscore3.0 is a biodiversity assessment model which assess the impact of various pressures such as climate change, nitrogen deposition and land use change. The current version of Bioscore assess more than 4500 European vascular plant species for all habitat types classified as terrestrial under the EUNIS classification. The aim is to adapt the Bioscore3.0 model for wetlands by including direct drivers relevant for the wetlands ecosystems in Europe and include species which are characteristic species of this ecosystem.
