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ALFAwetlands: Wetland restoration for the future

ALFAwetlands: Wetland restoration for the future

Peatlands

The goal of the ALFAwetlands is to improve the geospatial knowledge base of wetlands, to evaluate pathways of wetland restoration that incorporate a co-creation process, and to provide information and indicators for sustainability to maximise climate change mitigation, biodiversity and other benefits.

ALFAwetlands improves the tentative wetland map based on available EU and other European and global data to be more consistent, comprehensive, and accurate than currently available European wetland maps, via multiscale thematic GIS data, national and regional scientific research and data platforms, governmental bodies, and non-governmental organisation (NGO). Therefore, remote sensing, GIS data and state-of-the-art machine learning models are used to produce detailed maps of wetland types, organise management for Living Labs (LL) and wetland-rich catchments and produce priority lists and maps for wetland restoration.

ALFAwetlands is carried out at local, regional, national and EU levels. At the local level, LLs support and integrate interdisciplinary and multi-actor research on ecological, environmental, economic, and social issues.To scale up experimental data from LLs, Models are utilised to gain an understanding of the potential impacts of upscaled wetland restoration options on biodiversity and ecosystem services provision, as well as changes on the provision at the EU level for various policy-relevant time periods and the most policy-relevant climate change mitigation and biodiversity targets.

The role of Wetlands International Europe is to maximize the impact of the project among a wide range of relevant stakeholders and target audiences, via dissemination, communication, knowledge exchange, and exploitation of outcomes at local, national and European levels. We support the uptake and upscaling of exploitable outputs, advocating for and supporting evidence-based policymaking through events, workshops and training. In addition, a best practice for wetland restoration will be developed, as a reference tool for cost-effective implementation of wetland restoration policies.