Restoring ecosystems and their functions

Operatie STEENBREEK

Operatie Steenbreek is a foundation that organizes awareness raising campaigns and offers assistance with regards to greening private gardens. Many gardens and streets in the Netherlands are covered with tiles that cannot absorp the rainwater from heavy rainfall.

The idea behind the initiative is to encourage citizens to remove the tiles and stones from their gardens/backyards and replace it with grass, plants and trees for better drainage and to increase the biodiversity.

Thanks to an app., citizens can be adviced and exchange plants with neighbours. Citizens can...

LEAFSKIN® Green Shady Structure

Green roof LEAFSKIN. Source: https://www.singulargreen.com/el-proyecto-urban-greenup-cumple-un-ano/

LEAFSKIN® is an ultralight green roof set up over pedestrian streets or squares, in order to create shadow areas in urban spaces.

The tecnhology can also provide interesting implimentation like carring lighting system or advertising on the bottum.

Description of the NbS

The NbS is composed by three main elements:

The facilities room. It is an unused newspaper kiosk, where there will be installed the irrigation system machines. An irrigation pipe is coming from this kiosk to the structures and a duct with the excess water returns back

Application of Eco:Actuary in the Thames catchment, UK: A series of tools to operationalise strategic planning and investment for Natural Flood Management. H2020 NAIAD Project.

EcoActuary: an open-access catastrophe model capable of assessing the impact of green infrastructure on local and downstream assets at risk of flood.

Using the widely used Policy Support System tools at www.policysupport.org as a basis, we built an insurance industry-relevant policy support system called Eco:Actuary. The objective of this project is to to co-develop and test the Eco:Actuary with NAIAD project partners & stakeholders in the fluvial non-tidal Thames as a DEMO catchment in the NAIAD project.

EcoActuary is an open-access catastrophe model capable of assessing the impact of NbS on local and downstream assets at risk of flood. It simulates a minimum of 1200 spatial...

Green Roof in refurbished industrial building (Office building 22@)

Green roof at Office building 22@ Source: picharchitects

Rehabilitation of an existing building by adding, among other rehabilitation measures, a semi-public green space on the roof with a positive influence on the health of users, positive effects on urban climate against the heat island effect and positive effect on water by it storages in the deck space. It also improves the energy efficiency of the building by the insulation provided by the layers of green cover.

The restoration of the former saltworks in southern France

1 Restore a more natural hydrological functioning that reconnects the surrounding hydrosystems (including the lagoons located further inland, the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhône River).

2 Restore the natural ecosystems characteristic of coastal lagoons and sandy coastlines, including dunes, salt steppes and saltmarshes.

3 Maintain or increase the carrying capacity for breeding colonial water birds.

4 Implement adaptive management to sea-level rise, creating accommodation space for water spread.

5...

Integrated green grey infrastructure (IGGI) - Ecologically enhanced sea defence

Passive enhanced boulder with water retention feature uppermost.

Ecological enhancement of hard coastal structures. Project aimed to mitigate expected habitat losses associated with improving coastal defences for both the natural substrate & pre-existing defences within Natural 2000 site, & minimise future habitat losses due to sea level rise & coastal squeeze.

Brague DEMO: Flash flood and wildfire hazards in a Mediterranean catchment

Locations of the Brague river and other catchments and municipalities heavily touched by the Oct. 2015 flood disaster © NAIAD D6.1

The public perception of ecosystems (e.g. forests, including possibly protecting ones) is strongly worsened following floods with massive wood jams. This case study aims at performing a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of a Mediterranean catchment to assess NbS benefits, dis-benefits and co-benefits and ways to optimize them.

Paris Oasis Schoolyards programme

Plan of the Charles Hermite Oasis Courtyard, Paris

Reduce the local heat island effect
Provide pupils with a healthy and stimulating learning environment
Educate residents to risk culture on climate change
Make refuges of freshness available to the most vulnerable populations
Create numerous meeting spaces to spur conviviality and solidarity

Barcelona, Spain: Ajuntament de Barcelona

Barcelone green infrastructure and biodiversity plan 2020, Barcelona City Council

The objective of the catalogue of actions set out in the Green Infrastructure and Biodiversity Plan is to implement a strategy for improving existing green heritage and for preserving and enhancing Barcelona’s biodiversity to provide the inhabitants of Barcelona with many ecosystem services.

Montpellier, France: Agroforestry: Agriculture of the future? The case of Montpellier

Example of agroforestry concept applied by farmers: trees and medical species cultivation. Author and source: Christian Dupraz

The objective is to make the Montpellier agricultural systems more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as increasing temperatures or droughts, water and biotic stresses and more extreme events.

Main benefits can be summarized as follow:

INRA (Institut Nantional de la Recherche Agronomique) researchers showed that the production from one hectare of a walnut/wheat mix is the same as for 1.4 hectares with trees and crops separated. This was a 40% increase in productivity, far better than any other innovation introduced by agronomists in the recent past.

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