Project description
Reviving urban streams for sustainable cities
Cities worldwide are grappling with the challenges of climate change and rapid urbanisation. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as a crucial approach to address these urban issues holistically. However, understanding how NBS can be effectively integrated into urban freshwater landscapes remains a puzzle. With this in mind, the EU-funded StreamScape project aims to bridge this knowledge gap by examining the social and environmental impacts of urban streams as essential NBS. It seeks to protect water quality, mitigate natural hazards, preserve biodiversity and enhance the well-being of city dwellers. By focusing on case studies in Aveiro and Coimbra, Portugal, StreamScape will assess the impact of urban development. It also investigates how the degradation of these streams shapes public perception.
Objective
Cities around the world are undergoing significant transformations and are facing substantial challenges in the form of urban of climate change and ongoing urbanisation. The idea that we can work with nature to improve our cities is now seen as vital. The concept of Nature-Based Solutions has emerged to foster sustainable development by transversally addressing social, economic, and environmental urban challenges. Although the attention to nature-based solutions inclusion is an important pillar of urban sustainability, a clear understanding how they can be implemented in the freshwater landscape, is still missing, even in face of the relevance of the urban freshwaters to wellbeing of the population. This investigation aims to fill this gap, by analysing the social and environmental impacts of urban streams as important nature-based solutions from protecting water quality to reducing natural hazards while preserving biodiversity and providing health and wellbeing benefits to population. By selecting as case studies Aveiro and Coimbra, the research project aims to promote the urban streams and their multiple ecosystem services as important nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of urbanization and climate change on aquatic ecosystems, in the human health and in the wellbeing of the population. The project will adopt the research strategies: to assess how urban development affect a capacity of urban streams to provide ecosystem services using well-established scientific methods and investigate how the degradation of urban streams reflects on the local residents’ perception of the ecosystem services in terms of benefits, health and wellbeing. In addition, thematic maps of ecosystem services identified in the urban streams will be produced to demonstrate the relevance of urban streams for ecological, cultural and social aspects and to demonstrate can this information can be useful to urban planning and governance.
Fields of science
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrologylimnology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographynatural disasters
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
3810-193 Aveiro
Portugal