INTEGRATED WATERSHED
MANAGEMENT
REFRESH
AT A GLANCE
Title: Adaptive strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of
Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems
Instrument: Collaborative Project, FP7
Total Cost: 10,024,171 €
EC Contribution: 6,997,746€
Duration: 48 months
Start Date: 1/02/2010
Consortium: 25 partners from 17 countries
Project Coordinator: University College London UCL (UK)
Project Web Site: http://www.refresh.ucl.ac.uk
Key Words: freshwater ecosystems, climate & land
use change, adaptation, mitigation, restoration,
integration
THE CHALLENGE
Understanding how freshwater ecosystems will respond
to future climate change is essential for the
development of policies and implementation strategies
needed to protect aquatic and riparian ecosystems. The
future status of freshwater ecosystems is however, also
dependent on changes in land-use, pollution loading
and water demand. In addition the measures that need
to be taken to restore freshwater ecosystems to good
ecological health or to sustain priority species need to
be designed either to adapt to future climate change or
to mitigate the effects of climate change. REFRESH is
concerned with generating the scientific understanding
that enables such measures to be implemented
successfully.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The key objective of the REFRESH project is to develop a
system that will enable water managers to design costeffective restoration programmes for freshwater
ecosystems at the local and catchment scales. This will
account for the expected future impacts of climate
change and land-use change in the context of the Water
Framework and Habitats Directives. At its centre is a
process-based evaluation of the specific adaptive
measures that might be taken at these different scales
to minimise the expected adverse consequences of
climate change on freshwater quantity, quality and
biodiversity. The focus is on three principal climaterelated and interacting pressures; i) increasing
temperature; ii) changes in water levels and flow
regimes; and ii) excess nutrients. We focus primarily on
lowland systems as those often pose the most difficult
problems in meeting both the requirements of the WFD
and Habitats Directive.
METHODOLOGY
The Project considers how freshwater ecosystems
(rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and riparian wetlands) in
Europe will change over the next fifty years and it uses a
combination of novel experiments and modelling to
generate the understanding and tools needed to
implement an adaptive management strategy. A series
of carefully designed, co-ordinated field are supported
by laboratory and mesocosm experiments, analysis of
major databases that enable time-space modelling,
further analysis of long-term time-series assembled
during the Euro-limpacs project and by evidence from
palaeoecological studies where extreme events and
abrupt transitions in the past have been recorded. All
these approaches will be combined to help develop the
process-based models needed to run scenarios for
adaptive strategies and which are required for upscaling from local to river basin.
inputs to the integrated catchment models which will
simulate physical, chemical and ecological response to
changes in climate and land use. Early results from
OBTAINED AND EXPECTED RESULTS
Results from these and other reviews are being
synthesised on the web site http://www.climateand-freshwater.info/. The river, lake and wetland
experiments are have been completed. Preliminary
REFRESH will provide an improved prediction capacity
of the hydrological and hydrochemical response of
surface waters to land-use/management and climate
change and the subsequent changes in aquatic
ecological interaction. It will show how an integrated
approach to water-body assessment and management
can be developed for any European catchment using a
series of catchments representative of the main climate
regions in Europe. Climate and land use change
scenarios have been generated for the case study
catchments which provide predictions as to future
conditions at these sites. These will form the primary
modelling at a number of sites indicate that current
management practices will not be sufficient to
achieve WFD compliance in future and greater
efforts will be required to achieve good ecological
status. Threats to WFD compliance will stem from
changes in both land cover and climate. Further
progress has been made with strengthening the links
between the physical / chemical and the ecological
models, one of the key innovative aspects of the
Project. In tandem with this, a series of wide ranging
reviews has been completed focusing on adaptation,
mitigation and restoration strategies at different scales.
results indicate the potential of riparian shading as a
management tool for lowland streams both in terms
of reducing temperature and increasing habitats.
Results of lake mesocosm experiments indicate further
reductions in nutrient loading will be necessary to offset
temperature driven increases in eutrophication.
Further stakeholder workshops have taken place to
discuss cost effective measures to meet the WFD and
PROJECT PARTNERS
University College London, UK
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, (Canada) CA
Aarhus Universitet- National Environmental Research Institute, DK
Commission of the European Communities - Directorate General Joint
Research Centre, EU
The University of Reading, UK
Stichting Deltares, NL
Finnish Environment Institute, FI
Universitaet fuer Bodenkultur Wien, AT
Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, DE
Biology Centre AS CR, v.v.i., Institute of Hydrobiology, CZ
Alterra B.V.. NL
Eesti Maaülikool (Estonian University of Life Sciences), EE
Natural Environment Research Council, UK
Universitat de Barcelona, ES
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE
University of Patras, GR
Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, UK
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UNIVERSITE PAUL
SABATIER, FR
Utrecht University, NL
Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research, NO
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, ES
Norwegian Institute for Water Research, NO
Middle East Technical University, TR
Trent University, CA
Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V, DE
Australian Rivers Institute (ARI), Griffith University, AU
HD. This has informed the modelling work at the
demonstration case studies.