SEDiment and water management tools for supporting aquatic ECOsystem services under exposure of hydropower regulations and extreme events

For effective implementation of the ecosystem services and restoration approaches under these increasingly challenging climate change conditions, there is a lack of mapping and processing tools for interpreting of the monitoring and modeling results at integrated length scales to address processes ranging from small catchments and to large-scale water-sediment management of rivers with existing hydropower plants. The main goal of the present proposal is therefore to help close this knowledge gap by developing a supportive tools to improve the ecosystem services in the heavily modified river bodies (i.e., hydropower) exposed to high sediment yield, with a joint effort of 6 partners from different European countries. This effort explicitly includes the combination of measurements and simulation tools with a focus on improvement of the ecosystem services by digitalization and integrated management of the hydropower schemes, including economical valuation stakeholder perception. The overall aim is that the results from the SEDECO4EU objectives can be used by stakeholders of the concerned river basins to support their change management in water governance, increasing the robustness of system and awareness of tradeoffs among various aquatic ecosystem services. It should be mentioned that sustainable management is of particular importance for meeting the objectives of EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change (because mitigation of the sediment induced problems increase the resilience of the ecosystem and the associated ecosystem services We are enhancing quality, collection processes and interpretation of data on states and trends of the ecosystem services connected to and provided by regulation-impacted rivers and reservoirs, particularly connected to sediment. We further provide a new metrics system for evaluating different trade-offs for ecosystem services due to extreme events, as well as for the monetization by producing energy through hydropower