Stakeholder driven modelling of best Ecosystem Service solutions in River basins (STRIVER)

ERA-NET COFUNDWATERWORKS2015

Joint Programming Initiatives

Water Challenges for a Changing World

Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change

In a process driven by combined Stakeholders (SH) and scientific knowledge, STRIVER will develop and test scenarios over geographic and socio-economic gradients in five European case study catchments (CSC), where agriculture and forestry predominate, to guide decision making on ecosystem services (ES). Key SH will include sector authorities, farming and forestry associations, conservation organizations, representatives from nearby urban areas and SMEs. STRIVER will test the combined effects of Green Infrastructures (GI - ecosystem-based solutions) to identify synergies and trade-offs between different management options within the agricultural and forestry sectors and ES provision (e.g., regulation, provision, biodiversity) for effective Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) under climate and land use change scenarios. STRIVER will develop a platform for social learning, enabling local SH and scientists to jointly identify optimal GI based solutions to meet multiple management objectives in combined land and water resource management in different settings.

Links to change will be assessed by incorporating traditional indicators and innovative measures of ecosystem structure and function over different levels of ecosystem organization in aquatic and terrestrial environments. STRIVER will integrate powerful modelling methods (spatiodynamic and agent based modelling, virtual watersheds and ES modelling) and a Decision Support System (DSS) will run multiple management scenarios, incorporating socio-economic multi-criteria analysis of GI solutions to explore terrestrial and aquatic ES trade-offs linked to national and European policy. STRIVER will integrate SH knowledge, perspectives and agendas into the modelling approach from the outset, based on careful design of overall platform structure and case related participatory events. STRIVER participatory research will build strategy and create researcher - SH spaces for social learning in CSC, encourage agreement and understanding on indicators of quality, investigate national differences, challenges and potential of participatory modelling approaches.