Protection of meadow orchards and fruit tree alleys supporting biodiversity, the cultural heritage of our landscape, old varieties, and the sustainable development of agricultural landscapes.

The project focuses on improving green infrastructure through the maintenance of orchards and orchard lanes, which play a crucial role in protecting biodiversity. These habitats provide a refuge for many species and preserve old fruit varieties with valuable genetic information. Unfortunately, many new plantations suffer from poor management and the spread of invasive species. The project aims to promote sustainable management and restore the ecological value of these habitats.

A key element of the project is cross-border cooperation between Northern Bohemia and Saxony, based on the historical and ecological links between the regions. The outcome will be a bilingual knowledge database containing information on meadow orchards, varieties and their distribution. This database will support the exchange of expertise, the transfer of best practices and the sustainable use of the landscape. The project will also analyse the benefits of orchards through ecosystem services and involve landowners and other stakeholders.

An integral part of the project is fruit processing and support for regional supply chains, which can contribute to the long-term sustainability of meadow orchards. The focus is on economic viability and the promotion of traditional fruit growing that supports biodiversity and local communities. The project combines ecology, tradition and sustainable development to protect the natural heritage and create healthier landscapes.

IEEP is responsible for assessing the benefits of meadow orchards in the landscape using the concept of ecosystem services, evaluating biodiversity and identifying landowners’ motivations and barriers to planting and maintaining fruit trees.

Supporting cities in planning restoration of small streams that will improve the quality of life of residents, increase biodiversity and contribute to climate change adaptation

The project focuses on the restoration of urban streams using nature-friendly solutions. Although many (scientific) studies show that revitalised streams bring many benefits (from flood mitigation, biodiversity restoration, cooling of cities to recreational and aesthetic functions), their restoration using nature-based solutions is still not a common practice in the context of urban areas.  Indeed, in practice, stream restoration faces a number of obstacles. There is limited space in intensively built-up areas, complicated property rights to surrounding land, or a lack of public and stakeholder awareness of the benefits that restored watercourses provide. The aim of the project is therefore to help cities to simplify the planning and implementation of restoration measures by using interdisciplinary approaches, engaging the professional and lay public and exchanging experiences. The project involves scientific partners from Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and the Netherlands and the cities of Dresden, Jablonec nad Nisou, Senica and Poznan, where the knowledge gained in the project will be implemented in practice. The main outputs of the project include restoration plans for model urban streams and implementation of nature based solutions on selected streams.

In the project, IEEP will be responsible for a work package aimed at integrating ecological, social, institutional and urban planning aspects of urban stream restoration.

Supporting cities and regions in Central Europe to develop and implement climate change adaptation strategies

The aim of the Climate_CRICES project is to increase the capacity of public authorities to cope with the expected impacts of climate change, such as heat waves and drought, water scarcity and flooding, and impacts on biodiversity. The challenge addressed in this project is to make use of the big amount of environmental, water and meteorological data available both within public institutions and from so far practically unused data sources (e.g. remote sensing data). By bringing them together on a single multilingual platform, municipalities, regions, agencies and research institutions from Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Italy will be able to increase the resilience of rural and urban areas to the impacts of climate change through more efficient and accurate analysis and forecasting. In cooperation with partners in Poland and Germany, it will then be easier to address climate change adaptation issues on a cross-border basis. 

As part of the project, IEEP will pilot the needs of the Liberec region and selected municipalities in the region, identify barriers to the development and implementation of adaptation strategies, and provide access to existing portals so that data can be integrated into a common Central European platform.

How to design an appropriate internal layout of agricultural land taking into account the ecosystem services provided. 

The aim of the project is to develop methods for optimising the internal layout of agricultural land, including zonation methods within soil sub-blocks (LPIS) in the context of effective application of precision agriculture and ensuring the diversity of agricultural landscapes. The optimisation also includes the design of environmental-technical areas where there is a requirement to enhance the environmental functions of the landscape. The methods must take into account the technical requirements of agricultural techniques, crop rotation principles, economics, but also aspects of the functional natural environment, soil and water conservation. The project will result in a set of methods for optimising the internal layout of LPIS, including an assessment of their impact on agrotechnical operations, ecosystem services, and in terms of future agricultural requirements, i.e. the possibility of CO2 fixation, and increased landscape stability. 

The IEEP team will be responsible for the economic assessment of the measures in the project. An integral part of this will be the consideration and valuation of externalities in the form of ecosystem services and costs of the measures. By implementing economic methods (cost-benefit analysis/multicriteria analysis) to determine the overall/sub-impacts, the suitability of the different options for implementing the measures will be assessed.

How to support sponge functions of freshwater ecosystems in the form of wetlands and other nature-based solutions

A consortium of 10 partners from a total of 7 different European countries aims to find, compile and test innovative solutions to increase the potential of the sponge function of the landscape, especially wetlands. Due to the impacts of climate change, it is essential to find ways to preserve or restore key ecosystem functions and features in the landscape. The main aim of the project is to develop a roadmap to support the further implementation of these measures based on all the evidence from existing research around the world, as well as the results of its own investigations and pilot case studies. In addition to the natural and technical aspects, attention will also be given to economic, social and regulatory aspects and to finding business models that will provide funding for the implementation of wetlands and other nature-based solutions beyond existing subsidies in the form of alternative innovative models.

The IEEP team is responsible for leading one work package and is also significantly involved in the implementation of institutional analysis, barrier analysis and the design and validation of innovative business models.

Comparison of the impact of conventional and organic farming on the provision of ecosystem services and formulation of arguments for adjusting the setting of support for organic farming.

The project aims to compare the impact of conventional and organic farming on the provision of ecosystem services, using own research, available data and literature. Ecosystem services whose provision is crucial both for the long-term resilience of agrarian ecosystems and for maintaining the resilience of the whole environment will be quantified. By quantifying ecosystem services in biophysical units (in conventional and organic farming) and their subsequent assessment, including life cycle assessment of selected agricultural products, the hitherto insufficiently under-considered added value of organic farming production in relation to the ecosystem services will be analyzed. Arguments and recommendations for (adjusting) the setting of organic farming support in accordance with the Czech Action Plan of organic farming and other related documents will be formulated.

Czech-Norwegian bilateral workshops on the use of floodplain forest buffer zones for improving water quality and reducing soil erosion.

Water quality is often influenced by agricultural production (soil run-off into watercourses, water pollution caused by fertiliser and other chemicals etc.). At the same time, current agricultural practices are contributing significantly to the erosion of valuable fertile soils. The costs of water treatment / purification within the water management infrastructure are increasing; the quality of soil and water, and the biodiversity are decreasing. Only little attention is paid to so called nature-based solutions (NBS), which could help meet these challenges and furthermore they bring also many other benefits to the society in form of various ecosystem services. One of these NBS is floodplain forest buffer zones between agricultural land and watercourses, but so far very little planting has taken place. The practical implementation of this measure faces a number of barriers.

The aim of the project is therefore to support the meetings of scientists and practitioners from the Czech Republic and Norway, enabling the exchange of experience and knowledge in this area, which should result in the submission of a joint bilateral or multilateral project aimed at identifying and evaluating the benefits of the riparian forest buffer zone and the subsequent proposal of support mechanisms for their practical implementation.

Funding Agency:           State Environmental Fund of the Czech Republic, Norway Grants

Duration:                      01/2019–08/2022

Contact Person:            Jiří Louda, e-mail: louda@ieep.cz

In cooperation with:       Norwegian University of Life Science, Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences

Development of interdisciplinary tools to support management of rainwater in municipalities.

Implementation of nature-based solutions in urbanized areas has a significant potential for adaptation of municipalities to climate change and reduction of associated negative effects such as floods from torrential rainfall, drought or heat islands. Although Czech municipalities try to prevent these effects, implementation of nature-based rainwater-retaining solutions in reality often faces insufficient capacities and lack of information necessary for their planning, procurement, implementation and promotion. One-sided solutions that do not fully exploit the potential for implementing blue and green infrastructure are often designed for these reasons.

The aim of our interdisciplinary project is to create a methodology that will clarify and facilitate municipalities’ decision-making during planning and implementation of nature-based rainwater-retaining solutions in urbanized areas. Furthermore, particular examples of possible solutions in an urbanized area will be provided, based on the character of the city and its surroundings.

The IEEP research team builds here on previous projects dealing with blue and green infrastructure. Existing outputs and tools will be further developed and applied in this project through interdisciplinary cooperation.

Development of a tool and SMART method for economic evaluation.

The realization of nature based solution fases their low enforceability and awareness of their co-benefits. An economic assessment of specific measures may serve as an important argument for the implementation (planning) of these measeures and leads to an increase in awareness of their importance. The aim of the project was to find, define, systemize and validate methods for the economic evaluation of different categories of nature based solutions (e.g. green walls and roofs, trees, etc.) in intelligent urban areas using green and blue infrastructure. The categories will be quantified both from the point of view of the direct costs and benefits associated with the construction and operation, and from the point of view of the side effects that are currently missing in the decisioin making process. A comprehensive methodology economic assessment was developed within the project, which will serve primarily as a basis for decision-making processes in the public administration.