Extreme weather events are occurring more frequently: since 1980, flooding in Europe has resulted in more than 4,300 deaths and economic damages of more than 170 billion euros. The impacts of floods and droughts depend on the health of Europe’s landscapes and their natural ability to retain water – similarly to a sponge. Nature-based solutions that improve landscapes’ “sponge” function are increasingly becoming a sustainable approach for improving these landscapes’ resilience and water-retention capacity.
This is the starting point of a new project that has received 15 million euros in funding from the European Union. SpongeWorks: Co-creating and Upscaling Sponge Landscapes by Working with Natural Water Retention and Sustainable Management started work in September 2024 and is coordinated by Leibniz University Hannover (LUH). The project head, Prof. Dr. Christian Albert of the Institute of Environmental Planning at LUH, explained: “SpongeWorks aims to plan ‘sponge landscapes’ and implement ‘sponge measures’ in a way that improves water retention and water quality, increases resilience to droughts and flooding, and protects and develops biodiversity at the landscape level.” The project will implement various “sponge measures” – from agricultural practices such as hedges, buffer zones and infiltration ponds to the restoration of rivers and marshes and the rewetting of forests and grasslands. The project will examine the ability of these measures to improve soil health, prevent erosion and refill groundwater reserves.
Project co-coordinator Dr. Ellis Penning of Deltares said: “By showing the effectiveness of these measures in a broader landscape context through three SpongeWorks demonstration projects, we want to inspire other European regions and enable them to also implement nature-based measures for improving climate resilience.”
SpongeWorks will implement 19 different sponge measures. These will cover 4,000 hectares of land, 47 kilometres of river and 22 kilometres of hedges and will involve more than 800 individual farms. The project partners will work closely with local decision-makers, experts and practitioners to jointly evaluate the technical, socioeconomic and financial aspects of these measures. Using uniform and systematic monitoring, SpongeWorks will demonstrate the effectiveness and sustainability of these measures.
In Germany, the implementation and study of the sponge measures as part of the cross-border German-Dutch demonstration project is planned for the Vechte river basin. Among others, measures such as the rewetting of forested areas and the restoration of river segments in the area near Laar are planned. Water-sensitive agricultural practices will also be implemented in order to increase the soil’s water-retention capacity.
Alongside LUH, with the Institute of Environmental Planning as coordinator, and the Dutch Deltares institute as co-coordinator, the 28 consortium partners include Twente University (Netherlands), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria), the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK) and the Office International de l’Eau (France). The project runs from September 2024 to August 2028. It is jointly funded by the following EU Horizon Europe funding programmes: EU Mission: Adaptation to Climate Change, EU Mission: Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030, and EU Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe.
The inaugural meeting of the SpongeWorks project will take place from 24 to 26 September 2024 at the Institute of Environmental Planning at Leibniz University Hannover. Additional details and an overview of all the partners are available on the project website: https://spongeworks.eu/.
Note to editors:
For further information, please contact Prof. Dr. Christian Albert and Maike Gebker, Institute of Environmental Planning at Leibniz University Hannover (tel. +49 511 762 2697, email gebker@umwelt.uni-hannover.de).
