WET HORIZONS - upgrading knowledge and solutions to fast-track wetland restoration across Europe

湿地是生物多样性的关键热点，由于其固碳和调节大气温室气体浓度的能力，提供了许多生态系统服务，如净水、防洪和缓解气候变化。尽管湿地在生态和经济上具有重要意义，但它们正在以惊人的速度消失，是欧洲最濒危的生态系统之一，只有不到20%的湿地仍处于良好的生态状况。湿地地平线将为使用整体方法加强湿地恢复的挑战提供关键的飞行起点。它将促进重要的湿地知识，并开发完善的工具和方法，以快速跟踪大规模恢复行动。该项目将改进现有的原始、排水和湿地泥炭、洪泛平原和沿海湿地的数据，模拟不同条件下典型恢复措施的效果，并分析潜在的社会经济影响，最终提供指导方针和最佳管理实践。Wide Horizons将利用公民科学收集数据，并将开发用于提升湿地恢复水平的数字工具，包括用于显示湿地状况的应用程序和为政策制定者提供的决策支持系统。这将使湿地恢复能够选择最佳路径，最大限度地减少权衡，包括热点优先列表，其中以最少的投资获得最大的生态和生物多样性效益。结果将在开放存取储存库中提供，以最大限度地利用和推广。在项目之前、期间和之后，将不断与政策制定者和利益攸关方对话，以核实调查结果，并确保这些工具支持针对具体国家的决策进程。该项目的成果将用于促进可行和更雄心勃勃的立法，以保护和恢复欧洲湿地，以增加对气候和生物多样性的好处。

Wetlands are key biodiversity hotspots that provide numerous ecosystem services such as water purification, flood control and climate change mitigation due to their capacity of sequestering carbon and modulating the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Despite their ecological and economic importance, wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, and are among Europe’s most endangered ecosystems, with less than 20% remaining in good ecological condition. WET HORIZONS will provide the critical flying start for the challenge of enhancing wetland restoration using a holistic approach. It will boost crucial wetland knowledge and develop sound tools and approaches for fast-tracking large scale restoration action. The project will improve the current data available from pristine, drained and rewetted peatlands, floodplains, and coastal wetlands, model the effects of typical restoration measures under variable conditions, and analyze the potential socio-economic impacts, finally delivering guidelines and best management practices. WET HORIZONS will involve citizen science for data collection and will develop digital tools for upscaling wetland restoration including an app for the visualization of wetland status and a decision support system for policy makers. This will enable to choose best pathways in wetland restoration minimizing trade-offs, including hotspot priority lists where the ecological and biodiversity benefits are greatest with minimum investment. The results will be available in open access repositories to maximize their use and outreach. There will be a constant dialogue with policymakers and stakeholders before, during and after the project, to ground-truth the findings and ensure that the tools support country-specific decision-making processes. The results of the project will be used to promote feasible and more ambitious legislation towards protecting and restoring European wetlands to increase benefits for climate and biodiversity.