Ecostack Innovations presents work on assessing freshwater ecosystem services for river basin management in Riga

Ecostack Innovations was present at the EU LIFE Programme Integrated Project “Implementation of River Basin Management Plans of Latvia towards good surface water status”, which was held in Riga, Latvia between the 26 and 27 October, 2022.

During his invited presentation, Dr Mario Balzan presented the work carried out by Ecostack Innovations within the LIFE IP RBMP project to review the current uptake of ecosystem service concepts in river basin management plans, map and assess ecosystem services for water catchment management, and assess the impact of implemented actions on a wide range of provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services.

During the presentation, the work carried out by Ecostack Innovations to map and assess ecosystem services in the different water catchment areas of the Maltese Islands was presented. The methodology developed by Ecostack Innovations has led to the categorisation of valley catchments in Malta and Gozo, and therefore making it possible to determine the relative importance of different catchments and sub-catchments in delivering key ecosystem services within the Maltese Islands and to identify relevant management actions according to the condition and ecosystem service capacities and their use by communities.

Following the presentation, the discussion focused on approaches for improved uptake of ecosystem services concepts in the prioritisation of nature-based solutions and management actions for water management. Here, recent work carried out by Ecostack Innovations to measure, through indicators and real-time data, the impact of nature-based solutions were discussed with the conference participants.