Research

Restore4Life’s Overall Objective is to develop an online long-lasting wetland restoration service that will allow large-scale holistic wetland restoration activities in the Danube basin and Europe through extensive dialogue and co-creation with multiple actors (knowledge holders, policy actors, citizens) as part of the Danube basin lighthouse of the Mission “Restore our ocean and waters by 2030”. Restore4Life will: 1) foster a digital water knowledge system to better understand, monitor, and forecast the health of the hydrosphere, based on existing and planned European infrastructures and services; 2) stimulate EU-wide, large-scale holistic restoration of Danube wetlands, floodplains and coastal wetlands to restitute their ecosystem functions services; 3) promote a participatory governance system based on the mobilisation and engagement of the public, civic and private sectors 4) Demonstrate and evaluate holistic wetland restoration approach and compile, test and optimise ecosystems’ and ES assessment indicators to enable their applicability in associated regions and their integration in the wetland restoration service and 5) Support local revenue and business activities in restored ecosystems

One of the core competences of BOKU is science communication. The DCNA as an actor in the field of research, networking and knowledge transfer is supported by this project. The focus of the cooperation is the dissemination of research results in the scientific as well as in the popular science area. The optimization of communication between experts, scientists and laypersons plays a special role in risk and crisis communication.

DNA barcoding, i.e. DNA-based methods for the determination of individual organisms in water samples, are now well developed and in some cases already established in the quality assurance of monitoring projects. DNA-based methods for the determination of many organisms in mixed samples (DNA metabarcoding) are also well developed, as is the non-invasive detection of organisms in water or sediment via so-called "environmental DNA" or "eDNA" (eDNA metabarcoding). The main advantages of genetic methods, especially eDNA, include the rapid and standardised determination of sample material from mixed or environmental samples via barcode sequences, the more comprehensive documentation of biodiversity including difficult-to-determine or cryptic species, the possibility to make the raw data easily available for quality assurance purposes, and to store DNA for reanalysis. The aim of the project is to develop solutions for the pressing challenges in this context: Development of reliable reference databases, (meta-) data standards, user-friendly application.