Context-dependence of the societal and ecological outcomes from river ecosystem restoration

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Stoll
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems ; Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491738349

River restoration projects have so far mainly focused on recreating local habitat conditions and thereby enhancing biodiversity. This habitat-based, local scale approach has been widely criticized as it does not consider the strong influence of large-scale drivers on ecological outcomes. Furthermore, the societal needs for and benefits from restoration are still poorly documented and their relation to the local and regional environmental context remains unclear. Concepts on the relevant scales for restoration management have been developed lately but still lack proper analysis on large datasets of restoration projects, monitored over time.The COSAR project aims at assessing the influence of the present and historical spatial context of restoration projects on both their ecological and societal outcomes as well as their synergies and trade-offs.The project partners collate their existing ecological monitoring data from 200 restoration projects, covering most Central and Northern European river types. In addition, social media posts from restored sites will be analyzed to infer ecosystem services and how people interact with restored sites. The project is composed of three work stages. First, we define and quantify ecological and societal metrics of restoration success and integrate them in a framework to investigate their synergies and trade-offs. Second, we contextualize these ecological and societal restoration results with European scale biotic and abiotic environmental and socio-economic data at various spatial scales to identify the relevant drivers and scales enhancing or preventing restoration success. In this analysis, we also consider legacy effects of historical environmental conditions. Third, we produce and disseminate an interactive online decision support tool, which can be used during restoration planning to apply the knowledge gained in the first two stages to their own restoration scenarios. Additionally, we provide fact sheets and highlight best practice examples for restoration planning.We apply a transdisciplinary approach and pay particular attention to stakeholder involvement at all project stages. These stakeholders represent various interest groups from all participating nationalities in the project. They will help identify the relevant set of success metrics that will be studied, shape the focus of the context analyses, give advice to ensure the relevance and user-friendliness of the project outputs and act as ambassadors in the dissemination of the project results.With this project design, we provide new knowledge and tools to foster ecological and societal benefits of restoration, facilitate the planning of promising restoration projects and inform the next management plans in order to reach both the goals of the Water Framework Directive and Sustainable Development Goals 3, 6, 14 &15.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Netherlands, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Agence Nationale de la Recherche / The French National Research Agency; Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Jeremy Piffady; Evelyne Tales; Professor Dr. Piet Verdonschot; Dr. Christine Weber