There is no universally agreed definition of a pond. Many ecologists have come up with definitions over the years (see Biggs, von Fumetti and Kelly-Quinn). For the purposes of this project, we define ponds as small standing waters varying in size from 1 m2 to about 2 ha in area that may be permanent or seasonal, man-made or naturally created.
There is a lot of information available on creating and managing ponds. PONDERFUL partners Freshwater Habitats Trust have a pond creation toolkit, which is freely available on their website https://freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/projects/million-ponds/pond-creation-toolkit/. The principals of pond creation are the same whether you are in the countryside or an urban environment. Clean water is key to creating a good wildlife pond, so make sure any new pond is located in a site that will provide the pond with an unpolluted water source.
Organisations can benefit from the set of tools that PONDERFUL will create to promote and guide the implementation of pondscape Nature Based Solutions. They can also benefit though collaboration and synergies between PONDERFUL and their projects.
Interested stakeholders can participate by sharing their experiences of pond restoration and management in the database of pond Nature Based Solutions that Work Package 4 is building. Please contact mireia.bartrons@uvic.cat.
By request to WP2 leaders or PONDERFUL coordinator. We are looking for biodiversity and environmental data. Contact sandra.brucet@uvic.cat or Luc.DeMeester@igb-berlin.de.
The project cannot be extended beyond Europe at this stage, but interested organizations can potentially collaborate with PONDERFUL as mentioned above. PONDERFUL is also interested in clustering with other projects with similar objectives or complementary topics.
The sampling protocol can be shared (if requested to WP2 leaders or coordinators) but the PONDERFUL project should be mentioned as the source of the protocol either in the methods or in the acknowledgements section.