Tag: restoration

FERRO project celebrates one year of advancing lake restoration across Europe

With a mission to address nutrient pollution and drive sustainable lake restoration across Europe, the FERRO project marks its first year.

Launched in June 2024, the Horizon Europe-funded project: Fostering European Lakes Restoration by Nutrient Removal, Recovery and Reuse: Integrated Catchment and In-lake Scale Approach (FERRO) – brings together scientists, engineers, and environmental experts from across Europe to develop innovative, nature-based, and circular solutions to reduce nutrient pollution in freshwater ecosystems.

Eutrophication, caused by excessive nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen that enter lakes and reservoirs, remains one of the most pervasive threats to freshwater bodies. These excess nutrients often originate from agricultural runoff and wastewater discharges, resulting in algal blooms, oxygen depletion, and biodiversity loss.

FERRO addresses these challenges by working at both catchment scale and in-lake level, aiming not only to remove harmful nutrients, but also to recover and reuse them – aligning with Europe’s goals for circular economy and sustainable water management.

With a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, FERRO combines natural science, engineering, economics, and policy to develop scalable restoration strategies adaptable across Europe’s diverse lake regions.

The FERRO consortium

FERRO unites seven partners from six European countries, each contributing unique expertise to the project’s holistic approach:

Together, these organisations form a powerhouse of knowledge, experience, and innovation in the fields of limnology, hydrology, environmental policy, circular resource use and communications.

Pensoft’s role in FERRO

As the leader of the Communication and Dissemination Work Package #2, Pensoft plays a key role in ensuring that FERRO’s results and insights reach the widest possible audience. The responsibilities include the development and maintenance of the project’s visual identity and digital presence, managing media relations, producing public outreach materials, and facilitating knowledge exchange between scientific, policy, and stakeholder communities. Pensoft also supports the strategic dissemination of scientific outputs and policy-relevant findings, ensuring alignment with the project’s broader impact goals.

FERRO marked its first anniversary with a successful General Assembly meeting held in Leipzig, Germany, between 20th and 22nd May. Over the three-day meeting, the project partners gathered to reflect on the progress achieved during the first year, align their visions for the project’s future, and collaboratively plan the next phases of implementation

As the project entered its second year, the Leipzig meeting served as a moment to evaluate initial findings, refine methodologies, and strengthen engagement with stakeholders at local, regional, and EU levels. The outcomes will guide the FERRO consortium in its continued efforts to advance lake restoration across Europe.

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Stay tuned for more updates as the FERRO project continues to develop and implement its solutions for healthier lakes and more sustainable nutrient management across Europe! 

You can keep tabs on the project’s official website: ferroproject.eu and also follow FERRO on LinkedIn, X and YouTube.

Nature Conservation opens “Restoration of Wetlands” collection

The permanent topical article collection aims to bring together key insights into restoration of wetlands and coastal marine systems, thereby facilitating exchange among different disciplines.

The “Restoration of Wetlands” permanent topical article collection in the open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal Nature Conservation is now open for submissions, with the aim to bring together a wide spectrum of knowledge necessary to inform scientists, policy-makers and practitioners about key insights into restoration of wetlands and coastal marine systems, thereby facilitating exchange among different disciplines.

Being a permanent collection means that it is to welcome contributions indefinitely, whereas papers will progress to publication as soon as they are accepted by the editors. While they will be accessible from a central point: the collection, which is also assigned with its own DOI, the articles themselves will feature in different journal volumes, depending on their publication date.

Find more about the specificity of Special issues and Topical collections on the journal’s website.

The issue is managed by an international team of scientists:

“Worldwide, the loss of biodiversity in wetlands, like rivers and their floodplains and peatland but also in deltas and estuaries is dramatic,”

the guest editors explain.
Photo by Mathias Scholz.

Due to intensive land-use, including farming, urbanisation, drainage, construction of levees or bank stabilisation or straightening of river courses and coastlines, wetlands are losing their typical functions, such as carbon storage and habitat provision. As a result, the ecosystem services they provide are declining and so is the coastal biodiversity as a whole.

However, various restoration measures have been carried out to revitalise wetlands over the last decades, on a global scale. Some of those have already proved successful, while others are still on their way to improve wetland biodiversity and related ecosystem functions and services. For all these efforts, the end goal is to implement international biodiversity actions and policies for adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

Among others, the “Restoration of Wetlands” article collection in the Nature Conservation journal seeks to attract contributions addressing issues, such as the roles of society and planning, as well as biology in restoration; indicators to monitor and measure restoration success; the synergies between wetland restoration and climate change adaptation; and hands-on expertise in restoration.

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Find more about the “Restoration of Wetlands” collection on the Nature Conservation’s journal website. 

Follow Nature Conservation on Twitter and Facebook.