Tag: wetlands

Providing solutions to restoring the natural water retention function of landscapes: Pensoft joins the SpongeBoost project

At SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to take charge of the project’s identity, while building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information.

In recent years, Europe’s landscapes have become the victims of extreme events – ranging from floods to droughts – that have caused considerable damage to nature as well as human society. 

With the aim to tackle such severe circumstances, the newly-started Horizon Europe-funded project SpongeBoost will be working towards protecting and promoting natural sponge landscapes. 

Within SpongeBoost, the functional capacity of sponge landscapes is to be enhanced through building upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation, but also through innovative approaches.

Pensoft is among the partnering institutions within SpongeBoost and serves as the leader of Work Package #5: “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking”. WP5 will aim to contribute to the project’s mission by building the overall project identity, building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information to targeted stakeholders.

The project 

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme with a budget of EUR ~3 million, the project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe. Having been officially launched in January 2024, SpongeBoost is to wrap up in December 2027. 

The project is part of the EU mission “Adaptation to Climate Change”, whose task is to support EU regions, cities and local authorities in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change.

“The protection and revitalisation of wetlands, particularly through peatland rewetting and river floodplain restoration, plays a central role in this,“

says project manager Mathias Scholz from the UFZ. 

SpongeBoost held its official kick-off meeting in late February (2024) in Leipzig, Germany.

To officially kickstart the project, the first consortium meeting took place on 21-23 February in Leipzig, Germany. The kick-off meeting saw all 10 partnering institutions meet in person to officially lay the foundation of a promising collaboration that will flourish over the next four years.

The joint mission before the newly formed consortium is to enhance the natural sponge function of wetlands and soils in Europe, aligning with EU policies for climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and biodiversity. To achieve that, the project plans to employ both bottom-up and top-down approaches, which will foster networking and synergy at the regional and EU level.

SpongeBoost will focus on five main objectives over the next four years:

  1. Conduct a comprehensive literature review to create a standard reference catalogue for securing and enhancing sponge functions in adaptation to climate change. This catalogue will integrate social, economic, technical, and ecological effects and serve as a widely used resource across Europe and beyond.
  1. Build a knowledge base on existing approaches for enhancing sponge functions, and highlight the reasons for success or failure. The goal is to enable regions and communities to replicate effective transformative solutions. Meanwhile, the consortium is to facilitate networking initiatives with other projects and identify suitable pilot sites for monitoring long-term success using the results of previous projects.
  1. Work on the implementation, tests, refinement, and adjustment of best practices and innovative solutions through EU-wide case studies. The goal is to enhance climate resilience to extreme events and enable upscaling from local to EU levels.
  1. Develop a roadmap with practical tools to empower stakeholders, drive transformative change, and integrate sponge solutions into regional, national and European climate adaptation processes to achieve EU Green Deal targets.
  1. Connect communities and compile online resources for climate change adaptation. The goal is to facilitate access and combine a library of tools for restoration and share research findings on soil, water, and groundwater interconnection for replication across Europe.

In addition to leading the “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking” work package at SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to also assist the Environmental Action Germany (DUH) in the implementation of different innovative communications methods and ideas meant to support the project’s goals.

As part of the creative communication strategy, DUH will take the lead in the development of a “SpongeBooster superhero” character. By creating such a character that will be also featured in comics, the team will translate complex concepts into clear visuals and engaging narratives, thereby shaping the project’s visual identity and letting non-experts join the discourse. The Sponge Booster is to serve as an innovative method to disseminate project knowledge and address barriers with humour while fostering dialogue and avoiding potential conflicts. 

International Consortium 

The SpongeBoost project brings together a team of 10 partners from seven European countries, spanning research, policy, and management fields. The consortium members, who individually represent various restoration projects, will join forces and expertise to promote collaboration, knowledge exchange and synergies across European regions, to ultimately instil a lasting positive impact on sponge restoration for climate change adaptation.

  1. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany 
  2. Pensoft Publishers, Bulgaria
  3. Wetlands International, the Netherlands
  4. University of Tartu, Estonia
  5. Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
  6. Iberian Center for River Restoration, Spain
  7. Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds, Portugal
  8. RWTH Aachen University, Germany
  9. Stroming BV, the Netherlands
  10. Environmental Action Germany, Germany

Stay tuned for more project information on the SpongeBoost website coming soon at: www.spongeboost.eu/. In the meantime, you can follow SpongeBoost on social media on X and Linkedin.

Invasive species as biomonitors of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems?

Microplastics forming the disproportionate amount of plastic garbage, and catfish have become numerically dominant in some ecosystems thanks to their tolerance to pollution and anoxic environments.

Armored catfish (Pterygoplicthys spp.) and microplastics, as invasive species and emerging contaminants, respectively, represent two socio-environmental problems in the globalized world, since both have negative effects on faunistic communities and freshwater habitats, as well as on rural community fisheries and public health.

Non-native invasive species of armored catfish have become numerically dominant in some ecosystems, with efforts to eradicate them a seemingly endless task. Due to this, a possible scenario of biological homogenization in Mesoamerica can be expected, mainly given by the wide dispersion of the Pterygoplichthys species, added to the introduction of other non-native catfish species.

Photo: Miguel Ángel Salcedo. Drawing: Diana Ríos-Hernández.

The omnipresence of plastics in terrestrial and aquatic environments is caused by their excessive use and inadequate management of waste. The discarded plastics are fragmented, degraded, and dissolved by solar radiation, wind, and water, among other agents, to be incorporated into the food web in aquatic environments.

Microplastics found in the digestive tract of armed catfish (Pterygoplichthys spp.)

Both persist in the aquatic environment, microplastics forming the disproportionate amount of plastic garbage, and catfish thanks to their tolerance to pollution and anoxic environments, and their ability to survive for several hours breeding atmospheric oxygen. What is the relationship between the two? Microplastics, depending on their origin and composition, are sedimented in the wetlands, where they can be ingested by detritus feeders, such as armored catfish, mainly in areas where there is runoff or discharge of liquid waste.

In this context, we ask ourselves, can armored catfish be used as biomonitors of microplastics deposited in wetlands? Taking the above into consideration, the doctoral student Gabriela Angulo-Olmos under the guidance of the researchers Nicolás Álvarez-Pliego, Alberto J. Sánchez, Rosa Florido, Miguel Ángel Salcedo, Allan K. Cruz-Ramírez and Arturo Garrido Mora from the Laboratorio de Humedales, from the División Académica de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, decided to answer the aforementioned question based on the numerical dominance of armored catfish recorded in the aquatic ecosystems of the Metropolitan Area of Villahermosa (MAV) in the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico.

A) Study area; Metropolitan Area of Villahermosa. Map modified from INEGI (2021). B) La Pólvora lake (Satélite Airbus 2023).

The stomach contents of the specimens from a lake located in the MAV were reviewed and the results showed that all the specimens had consumed microfibers. This result corroborated that these organisms can ingest sedimented microplastics due to their benthophagous habits.

Microplastics. Image by Oregon State University under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

The use of armored catfish as a resource in the food industry has had positive results, but is still insufficient. Therefore, we propose that another option to control their populations is to subtract and use this organism to verify which are the most frequent and abundant emerging contaminants deposited in the bottoms of urban wetlands.

Research article:

Angulo-Olmos G, Alvarez-Pliego N, Sánchez AJ, Florido R, Salcedo MÁ, Garrido-Mora A, Cruz-Rámirez AK (2023) Microfibers in the gut of invasive armored catfish (Pterygoplichthys spp.) (Actinopterygii: Siluriformes: Loricariidae) in an urban lake in the floodplain of the Grijalva River basin, Mexico. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 53: 81–88. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.53.102643

Conversation on the shore: Interview with ecologist & geographer Kremena Burkhard

Kremena’s work on local coastal ecosystems in Germany aims to develop approaches and methodologies which can be applied in an international context.

The shore is a mutual caress. More than just a place of encounter between land and water, it is one of the physical and imagined thresholds between humans and the other-than-human world. This place of touch - through thoughts, actions, interconnections, and affect - is the inevitable crossing at the beginning and end of every inquiry into the world’s bodies of water. 

In the context of the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the recent historic High Seas Treaty to establish Marine Protected Areas in international waters, the world looks into the deep blue. Let us, however, linger on the way there for a moment. Let us breathe, and let the shore catch our breath.

This moment on the shore leads us to a conversation with Kremena Burkhard – a researcher at the Ludwig Franzius Institute of Hydraulic, Estuarine and Coastal Engineering at the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. Kremena’s work focuses on the co-benefits and risks of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems. 

Late last year, she presented her most recent work at the 4th European conference of the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), which won her one of the Best Poster Talk awards. 

I find the idea of improving the understanding of how ecosystems – and more generally the natural world – contribute to our well-being to be very inspiring and refreshing in a high-tech profit-oriented world,

she says to explain how she stays motivated in her research work.

To communicate this knowledge to policy- and decision-makers, as well as the general public is key, especially when we consider the threats of climate change and the fact that our deep dependency on nature seems to be largely undervalued,

she adds.
Kremena highlights the role of nature-based solutions:

When utilising conventional and  nature-based solutions, the focus is often on a single benefit that is demanded in a certain area, time and situation. 

In contrast to conventional solutions, nature-based solutions provide additional co-benefits. These may include biodiversity protection and other ecosystem services that address broader societal demands and are more sustainable in the long term.

As part of the CDRmare research mission “Marine carbon sinks in decarbonisation pathways” of the German Marine Research Alliance, Kremena’s work on coastal ecosystems aims to develop approaches and methodologies which can be applied in an international context.

Our project sea4soCiety focuses on the carbon storage capacity and co-benefits of four coastal vegetated ecosystems which play a key role as carbon sinks around the world and thus contribute to climate regulation. The analysis and methods developed in the project contribute scientifically to the studied topics and have an international relevance.

The German coast is representative of three coastal ecosystems, namely seagrass, salt marsh and macroalgae. The fourth ecosystem – that of mangrove forests in the tropics, is also investigated within the project as a key ocean carbon sink of global relevance.

But climate regulation is only one of the multiple services that these ecosystems provide. Coastal protection, water purification, food and material provision and recreation are among the key services of coastal ecosystems, the benefits of which are used and highly appreciated by the local communities and have significant role in the local safety, economy and culture. 

Kremena’s winning poster presented at the 4th European conference of the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) (Crete, Greece 2022)
What are the strategies for mitigating or further analysing the risks of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems?

We prioritise conservation and restoration of coastal vegetated ecosystems, which are often heavily degraded, and we identify the most suitable areas for establishment of new ecosystems. This reduces the risk of carbon release and provides additional carbon sink capacity. 

Further risks are related to unknown climate change impacts. The sea temperature and hydrodynamics are changing, and we are not sure how those changes of habitat will impact the coastal ecosystems. We are studying their reaction in laboratory environments and in the field, identifying thresholds for their functionality and capacity to supply ecosystem services. 

Finally, the identification and mitigation of conflicts with other users of those ecosystems is also key to reduce the social risks for all beneficiaries, including labour, human rights, public health issues, and political uncertainty.

When it comes to stakeholders and non-experts, is science communication around the topic of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems effective?

On a national and international level, Germany seems to be on track with setting targets and planning actions to become climate neutral through the Climate Action Programme 2030.

The CDRmare research mission and in particular the sea4soCiety project on carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems are in a way part of that effort, receiving funding to provide the knowledge base for the action programme. Thus, to some extent, the science communication on that level is working and the action plan is based on scientific knowledge. 

The shortcomings are in the implementation phase. Local governments are often lacking established mechanisms that allow and support the implementation of action plans related to the national targets. 

Such regulated implementation strategies should operationalise the uptake of scientific knowledge in the management of coastal ecosystems and by the local communities, and also in all fields of policy and management.
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