In October, the historic Catalan city of Vic provided the backdrop for the last official meeting of the PONDERFUL project. Members of the PONDERFUL consortium gathered over three days to share the project’s outputs and discuss future collaboration to ensure the project’s legacy continues far beyond its conclusion in November.
Hosted by project coordinators, the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia, the gathering brought together project partners from across Europe and South America. The European Commission’s Project Manager, Piret Noukas reviewed and gave feedback on the outputs of PONDERFUL.
Over the last four years, freshwater scientists working on PONDERFUL have gathered a significant amount of new data on ponds, which is helping us to understand the contribution of ponds to climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation. At the meeting, partners discussed future collaborative opportunities and plans to continue working with the project data.
The meeting included several workshops, focused on how to further improve and disseminate innovative tools developed during the project to increase the reach and impact of the project. These include:
- Two videos addressing the importance of ponds, and recommendations on how to build a pond.
- A Technical Handbook which provides practical advice on the protection, management, restoration and creation of ponds and pondscapes to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
- A Policy Guide directed at regional, national and international policy makers with the tools to design effective plans for ponds and pondscapes.
- Leaflets in 16 languages presenting a selection of evidence-based success stories from the so-called DEMO-sites, identified as part of the implementation of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for addressing societal challenges in those pondscapes (such as climate change and biodiversity loss).
- The CLIMA-Pond designs for new ponds for climate change adaptation and mitigation and biodiversity conservation.
- The Decision Support Tool – a web-based system that will enable people to compare different potential nature-based solution (NBS) implementations linked to pond or pondscapes.