As the social and policy pendulums swing, our environment is
being subjected to an increasing number of performance targets. But are we equipped to truly
help our environments meet these targets?
The desire to reverse impacts on our habitats and ecosystems
has resulted in legislation across many parts of the world. For example, in the
European Union (EU) there is the Water Framework Directive, requiring ‘Good
Ecological Status’ of rivers by 2015. Targets of this nature, inevitably lead
to: 1) current status baselines; 2) remediation and restoration works; and 3)
evaluation of efforts.
In the area of rivers, the EU IMPACT project1 is
hoping to inform effective habitat restoration. From this project comes a free
and open source fish dispersal model (FIDIMO2), allowing the
likelihood of fish to (re-)colonise restored or remediated habitats to be calculated.
This kind of tool and information should help deliver more effective river
remediation and restoration efforts, at least for fish.
But, do we have enough knowledge to deliver effective
remediation and restoration work in the first place? If not, what other tools
and models are available to help? What more can and should be done?
Sources
Photo
Peter aka anemoneprojectors Flickr Account - Creative Commons
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