The ETC-UMA team was actively involved in different sessions and activities during the European Ecosystem Services Conference, that took place between the 19th and the 23rd of September 2016 in Antwerp, Belgium. It presented recent results from both the H2020 project SWOS and ETC-UMA’s involvement in ecosystem-related topics with the European Environment Agency and the Working Group Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES).
As member of the H2020 project SWOS, the ETC-UMA team led the preparation of the dissemination stand at the Ecosystem Services fair on the 20th of September: a common stand and two common informative posters were shown jointly with ECPOTENTIAL project. This common stand and the material presented were a clear confirmation of the willingness of the teams of SWOS and ECOPOTENTIAL to strengthen this collaboration further at the scientific and communication levels. During the fair, the SWOS team showed the Beta version of its portal and its functionalities as THE entry point to easily locate, access, process and connect wetland information which attracted many stakeholders.
Dania Abdul Malak presented the latest developments within the SWOS project to the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem and Ecosystem Services (MAES) community during the S3 session entitled Setting Priorities for ecosystem restoration in the EU based on MAES. The presentation focused on the latest development of project related to the tailoring of a wetland specific nomenclature and the production of crosswalks with other relevant classification systems such as the Ramsar classification, among others. Furthermore, Dania presented the guidelines developed by SWOS to support a more precise assessment of the state and threat on wetland ecosystems, and more importantly on the wetland ecosystem and ecosystem services indicators being developed by SWOS.
Based on work done for the European Environment Agency, Dania Abdul Malak et al. presented the paper “Towards an integrated ecosystem assessment: how does the condition of ecosystems in Europe relate to their capacity to provide pollination services?” in the session S8 Operationalizing the notion of ecosystem integrity for ecosystem services assessment. This presentation highlighted the Integrated Assessment developed showing the links between the need of a good condition of ecosystems for a proper provision of pollination services in European agroecosystems and woodlands.
Finally, the ETC-UMA team presented the common ETC/ EEA poster entitled “Integration of soil multi-functionality into ecosystem services assessment in Europe” in the specific session dedicated to “Operationalising the concept of ecosystem services”.