The ESMERALDA Project
Enhancing ecoSysteM sERvices mApping for poLicy and Decision mAking
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan participate, with other 24 partners from Europe, in the ESMERALDA Project – Enhancing ecoSysteM sERvices mApping for poLicy and Decision mAking, funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. This Project aims to deliver a ‘flexible methodology’ that can simultaneously provide innovative building blocks for pan-European, national and regional ES mapping and assessment. ESMERALDA started in February 2015 and will run for 42 months, till end of July 2018.
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan contributes to several tasks:
- Determination of stakeholders expectation from MAES process;
- Identification of usefulness of existing maps and other datasets for ES analysis;
- Analyze of ES assessment for Poland regarding to the role of scaling, synergies or trade-offs, their shifting in time and space and as well reversibility;
- Testing of possibility to include a new data, indicators and processing methods for next generations of ES maps.
More information about this project could be found at www.esmeralda-project.eu.
The CONNECTING Nature Project
COproductioN with NaturE for City Transitioning, INnovation and Governance
In June 2017 the CONNECTING Nature Project – COproductioN with NaturE for City Transitioning, INnovation and Governance was launched. The overarching objective of this action is to position Europe as a global leader in the innovation and implementation of nature-based solutions. Two of the 29 partners are Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and City of Poznan. The project partners form a community of cities fostering peer-to-peer, transdisciplinary capacity-building between front-runner, fast-follower and multiplier cities. CONNECTING Nature will co-develop the policy and practices necessary to scale up urban resilience, innovation and governance via nature-based solutions. This action is strongly associated with the urban ecosystem services topic. Project is funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. CONNECTING Nature will run till end of May 2022 (read more).
The Project
Ecosystem services in young glacial landscape
– assessment of resources, threats and utilization
In the years 2013-2017 Ecosystem services in young glacial landscape – assessment of resources, threats and utilization was carried out in Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization in Warsaw (Polish Academy of Sciences) and funded by National Science Centre in Krakow under grant agreement No. 2012/07/B/ST10/04344. The most important specific research goals were (see Degórski et al. 2016):
- assessment of relations between social preferences and actual use of ecosystem services;
- identification of indirect indicators (surrogate measures) for evaluating ecosystem service stocks;
- selection of an optimum set of ecosystem services provided by studied ecosystem types and a corresponding set of direct and indirect indicators;
- service valuation (using the indicators) and ranking (by importance, by advantage) for individual ecosystems;
- ecosystem valuation and ranking with regard to individual categories of services provided.
The LINKAGE Project
LINKing systems, perspectives and disciplines for Active biodiversity GovernancE
In the years 2013-2016 the LINKAGE Project – LINKing systems, perspectives and disciplines for Active biodiversity GovernancE was carried out. The project was coordinated by Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) in Kraków and was realized in cooperation with Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences (Białowieża), Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and University of Tromsø (Norwegian partner). The ultimate aim of this action was to improve biodiversity governance in Poland and Norway by developing innovative protocols and technologies for biodiversity governance. Identification of ecosystem services and landscape values acknowledged by various interest groups was one of the detailed project objectives (read more).
Friends of the Polish Network of ESP
Ewa Siwicka is a Research Assistant in Environmental and Ecological Economics at Aberystwyth University. She specialises in applying economic valuation techniques to estimate values of ecosystem services. Her main research interest invokes to exploring how ecosystem service approach can help to alleviate poverty. She has been involved in number of overseas projects in Caribbean, Madagascar (ESPA P4GES) and Indonesia (GII British Council). Currently she is working on NERC DURESS project undertaking economic valuation and mapping of ecosystem services provided by Welsh uplands. During ESP 2014 she contributed to the organisation of Session 44 ‘Tropical Forest Biome Group.
Marta Sylla (birth name Szkaradkiewicz) is a researcher at the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Geodesy, the Institute of Spatial Economics. Her research covers variety of topics in ecological economics, mainly ecosystem service assessment and valuation. Her educational background is economics and urban planning. However, she has also completed training in environmental protection. She has gained research experience during internships e.g. at FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, and summer schools as a research project leader at Helsinki Summer School Measuring and Valuing Ecosystem Services. She has also joined the Department of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Global Change Research Centre, the Czech Academy of Sciences, where she is involved in the project on adaptation to climate change with ecosystem-based approaches in urban areas and the project on advancing SEEA – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting.