2019 – SloWaters.eu

BHS National meeting 24th – 25th April 2019, Lancaster University

May 13, 2019/in Conference, News/by slowaters

Native Woodland Conference 2018

April 17, 2019/in Conference, News/by slowaters

The Native Woodland Conference was the culmination of twenty years of outreach, policy, research, passion and of course, planting. A capacity crowd filled the venue to listen to a truly trans-disciplinary vision of Ireland’s native Woodlands.

Dr Bourke attended and delivered a presentation on the potential to reduce local flood peaks by introducing Natural Water Retention Measures into Ireland’s Native Woodlands.

The take-home message is: the potential in Ireland for runoff retention and infiltration during high rainfall events in forests is currently unexplored, but holds much promise.

The conference was a great success on many levels as can be seen in the conference report PDF available here.

If you would like to listen to some of the talks given they are available HERE.

NWRM at Ireland’s first National Biodiversity Conference

April 11, 2019/in Conference, News/by slowaters

Such was the appetite, that the first National Biodiversity Conference to be held in Ireland was fully booked out months in advance.

In a session chaired by Dr Collier (TCD), four experts were asked to consider How can we use nature-based solutions in river catchments? Particularly when we consider the need to Plan for the Future.

How can we use nature to help us alleviate floods, improve river health and benefit biodiversity? What does ‘ecological engineering’ mean for a river and in what circumstances is it the appropriate approach? What kind of local actions are communities undertaking? And are nature-based solutions necessarily solutions for nature?

There were 4 speakers:

Alan Sullivan from Rivus
Sheevaun Thompson from LAWPRO
Nathy Gilligan from OPW
and Mary Bourke from TCD

Dr Bourke was invited to speak about the potential for National Water Retention Measures in Ireland. Below is the link to her 10 minute talk.

Conference Charter ‘Our Seeds for Nature’

The Charter was agreed at a meeting chaired by Minister Josepha Madigan in Dublin Castle and attended by Minister Bruton, Minister Doyle and other senior leaders from 14 Government Departments, state agencies, private sector and non-governmental organisations.

The Charter comprises a suite of commitments for nature and biodiversity that go beyond the respective organisations’ current work programmes to support, scale up and fast track the implementation of the National Biodiversity Action Plan.

We were delighted to see two of our new research projects highlighted in the Charter in collaboration with the Office of Public Works (OPW):

#6: The OPW will

*Partner with the EPA on a major new research project – SloWaters – which is a strategic assessment of natural water retention measures.

*Partner directly with Trinity College Dublin on ecosystem services of Ireland’s forests for flood protection.

Finally if you have 40 minutes to be inspired by our President you can watch him in action here at the conference.

#EGU19: Nature Based Solutions (NBS)

April 9, 2019/in Conference, News/by BOURKEM4_m78z458u

Session HS5.1.2: NBS for hydrological extremes and water resource management

Today we convened our annual session at the European Geoscience Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna.

The session was convened by Mark Wilkinson | Co-conveners: Mary Bourke, Paul Quinn, Christian Reinhardt-Imjela.

Globally, we are facing massive challenges on how we manage our catchments, in both rural and urban areas, in the next decades. With a changing climate and increased pressure on our land resources we need to ensure we manage the water in our catchments more sustainably and even more so during hydro-climatic extremes.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are ‘living’ solutions inspired by and continuously supported by nature or natural processes. NBSs are designed to address various societal challenges in a resource efficient and adaptable manner to provide simultaneously economic, social and environmental benefits (European Commission 2015). Therefore NBS can be used within both rural and urban areas to mitigate catchment flood risk, provide drought resilience, protect and enhance endangered freshwater ecosystems and reduce diffuse pollution.

However, there are still challenges in implementing NBS for reasons such as lack of evidence surrounding the effectiveness (e.g. at larger scales) and for delivering multiple benefits.

The session focused on key research and policy questions associated with NBS. For example, how do we develop locally adapted solutions in catchments and urban areas? What are the impacts of these measures at larger scales (e.g. sub-catchment/ catchment scale)? How can we address multi-disciplinary benefits? How can we do more for less? Importantly, how can we provide the evidence base around the concept of Nature Based Solutions for managing hydrological extremes and water resource management?

Presentations included examples of studies on the management of flooding, drought, water quality or ecology (in the rural, peri-urban and urban context) using NBS approaches. Management measures include techniques such as Green Infrastructure, Natural Water Retention Measures, Natural Flood Management, Catchment Restoration, Ecological Engineering or Blue-Green Infrastructure.

We hope to see you at #EGU20