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

湿地是重要的生物多样性热点，由于其固碳和调节大气中温室气体浓度的能力，提供了许多生态系统服务，如水净化、洪水控制和减缓气候变化。尽管湿地在生态和经济上具有重要意义，但它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%的湿地保持良好的生态状况。WET HORIZONS将为使用整体方法加强湿地恢复的挑战提供关键的飞行开始。它将促进重要的湿地知识，并为快速跟踪大规模恢复行动开发良好的工具和方法。该项目将改善现有的原始数据，排水和重新湿润泥炭地，洪泛平原和沿海湿地，模拟不同条件下典型恢复措施的影响，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。WET HORIZONS将涉及公民科学的数据收集，并将开发用于扩大湿地恢复的数字化工具，包括一个用于湿地状况可视化的应用程序和一个供决策者使用的决策支持系统。这将有助于选择湿地恢复的最佳途径，最大限度地减少权衡，包括以最少的投资获得最大生态和生物多样性效益的热点优先事项清单。研究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这些成果。在项目之前、期间和之后，将与政策制定者和利益攸关方不断对话，以根据调查结果，确保这些工具支持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，增加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.