Wallingford, UK – October 23-25, 2024
The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) hosted the SpongeScapes General Assembly in Wallingford from 23 to 25 October 2024. SpongeScapes is a major European initiative aimed at improving resilience against climate extremes, such as floods and droughts. The General Assembly brought together all project partners from across Europe to review the first year of progress, plan for the year ahead, and visit key UK case study sites.
In the SpongeScapes project, monitoring natural water retention measures over different seasons and years is key to understanding their effectiveness. This summer, the University of Padova team carried out essential maintenance on their Italian case study sites in the Municipality of Santorso and Agripolis in the Veneto region.
Last Wednesday, a diverse group of researchers from Deltares, Waterschap Brabantse Delta, Wageningen University, and Provincie Noord-Brabant went on a field visit to the Chaamse Beken. This area serves as a case study in the SpongeScapes project, as well as the NWO-Nat and NWO-Castor projects, which aim to make the area more resilient against floods and droughts.
On May 16, 2024, SpongeScapes kicked off its first SpongeLab workshop in Loosbroek, The Netherlands, introducing the geodesign approach to local stakeholders in the Aa and Maas management area.
The workshop was organized by Leibniz Universität Hannover, which is leading work package 4 of the SpongeScapes project, “Co-assessing sponge strategies and enabling environments" together with Deltares and the Regional Water Authority Aa and Maas.
Last Friday, 8 March, Ellis Penning and Christopher Wittmann (Deltares) presented SpongeScapes at the NAC2024 conference, during a session dedicated to climate resilient sandy soil research in the Netherlands. The aim is to harmonise the work of the various Dutch-funded research projects on this topic.