Suchergebnisse

15 páginas, 4 figuras, 3 tablas.-- Este artículo se encuentra bajo Licencia Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial. ; Simple tools and accessible information are needed by environmental planners to select sites for the restoration or creation of wetlands. A flexible suitability model for allocating wetlands is demonstrated in small (20–2,000 ha) agricultural catchments in the semiarid Ebro basin (NE Spain). The model used improved existing data layers (soil and geomorphology), simple geographical transformations (slope and distance to frequently flowing streams) and other created data layers (land use). Detailed scales of data layers (~1:5,000 and <30 m cell-size) are needed to work with small catchments. A deep knowledge of the study area is a requirement for reducing the subjectivity associated with experts' decision. The studied cases proved that 31% of catchment areas were suitable to create wetlands, and another 12% were very suitable. In 11 out of 12 studied catchments 100% of their existing wetlands fell into the area selected by the model as suitable. Most of the suitable area was situated in the lower parts of the catchments examined in the study. There is enough very suitable area in all catchments to fulfil the functional requirements of the wetlands to improve water quality. The model is a simple and useful tool for environmental planning in areas degraded by irrigated agricultural use. ; This work was supported by CICYT (REN2003-03040), Aragon Government–D.G. Investigación, Innovación y Tecnología-Research Group on Ecological Restoration (E61), DGA (CONAID)–CAI (CA1/07), and Diputación de Huesca "Félix de Azara" Grants 2007, Estonian Science Foundation grant No. 6083, and Target Funding Project No. 0182534s03 of the Ministry of Education and Science of Estonia. ; Peer reviewed

Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi‐dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio‐economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land‐use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular. ; We appreciate the support given by BiodivERsA (project funded under the EU Horizon 2020 ERA-NET COFUND scheme), and the EKLIPSE project (European Union Horizon 2020 grant agreement 690474), and particularly by Juliette C. Young. JCS research is financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Education and Universities and European Regional Development Funds (FEDER; project COSTERA, RTI2018-095954-B-I00). PMRG research is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through FCT Investigator Program grant number IF/00059/2015, and Centro de Estudos Florestais is supported by FCT grants UID/AGR/00239/2019 and UIDB/00239/2020.