Advancing freshwater restoration

My Projects

Restore4Life project (Horizon Europe)

• Key project facts

  One of the most important initiatives I’ve worked on is the Restore4Life project (Horizon Europe), which supports the reconstruction and long-term resilience of European wetlands, with a focus on the Danube River Basin. The project’s primary goals are:

  • To identify and prioritize wetland areas for restoration using geospatial data, hydrological modeling, and stakeholder knowledge.
  • To co-develop a Decision Support System (DSS) that supports evidence-based policymaking and stakeholder involvement in restoration planning.
  • To engage local communities, authorities, and businesses through Living Labs (demo sites; implementations sites), enabling the co-creation of innovative solutions for wetland recovery.
  • To establish a virtual platform for monitoring, stakeholder engagement, learning, and policy reporting on wetland restoration progress.
  • To enhance carbon storage, biodiversity, and ecosystem service delivery by piloting nature-based solutions in real-world sites (e.g., Mahmudia in Romania).
    
    
• What impact did these projects have on biodiversity, if any?

  Restore4Life directly contributes to biodiversity recovery by:

  • Restoring degraded wetland ecosystems, enhancing habitat availability for threatened and endemic species, including birds, amphibians, and aquatic life.
  • Supporting species reintroduction and improved connectivity between freshwater and terrestrial habitats.
  • Promoting nature-based solutions that enhance natural processes (e.g., nutrient retention, floodplain reconnection), improving ecosystem function and resilience.
  • Facilitating community stewardship and integration of biodiversity goals into local and regional planning processes.

  The pilot sites demonstrate improved ecological status, increased biodiversity indicators and more favorable conditions for species migration and reproduction.

• What work challenges did you face and what approach did you take to solve them?

  Citizen‐science (CS) data reliability

  • In Restore4Life, we compared CS-based assessments of water quality, organic carbon stocks, and plant biodiversity against professional surveys 
  • Issues uncovered:
    • Difficult access to certain habitats, poor connectivity hampered GPS data collection.
    • Water quality testing in organic-rich wetland water was error-prone.
    • Participants misidentified plants and favored accessible, less-representative plots.
  • Solutions implemented:
    • Refined CS protocols to focus on robust parameters.
    • Enhanced training for volunteers, including clear species ID guides and better mapping support.
    • Introduced stratified site selection to ensure sampling across diverse habitat types.

  Developing reliable, scalable assessment frameworks

  • Early work produced a “Wetland Restoration Wiki” and a performance-based evaluation framework from systematic literature reviews
  • Issues uncovered:
    • Translating review insights into practical, fieldable indicators was complex.
    • Ensuring the Decision Support System (DSS) catered to ecological, governance, and socio-economic dimensions.
  • Solutions implemented:
    • Iterated frameworks with input from demonstration and monitoring sites across the Danube basin.
    • Structured the DSS around several key restoration performance domains: governance, ecology, services, business viability, and engagement 
       
• What lessons learned are transferable to other places/projects?

  Robust Citizen Science requires design with constraints in mind

  • Example: Recognize terrain access, provide structured sampling protocols, and tailor volunteer training.
  • Transferability: Essential for scaling CS efforts in diverse socio-ecological settings.

  Holistic, multi-criteria frameworks enhance project adaptability

  • The Wetland Wiki-based performance framework integrates ecological, governance, economic, and engagement indicators.
  • Transferability: These multi-dimensional evaluation systems support planning and monitoring in varied landscapes.

  Stratified sampling ensures representative monitoring

  • The bias toward easy access sites in CS sampling highlighted the need for deliberate site selection across gradients
  • Transferability: Useful for any restoration effort where landscape heterogeneity is high.

  Iterative co-design produces better restoration tools

  • Combining literature reviews, site testing, and stakeholder-led refinement led to a robust DSS 
  • Transferability: Co-design with local actors ensures higher tool adoption and contextual relevance.

  Digital platforms foster long-term engagement and dissemination

  • The Restore4Life virtual service supports communities of practice, workflows, and knowledge exchange
  • Transferability: Cloud-based platforms can bridge practice-policy gaps in various ecological restoration contexts.
• What is your biggest barrier and what are you trying to do about it?
  No. The project is still running. So still a lot of space for making mistakes….