Adaptive Strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems

The fourth REFRESH project meeting was held in Antalya (Turkey) from 22nd to 26th March, 2012. The meeting was jointly hosted by our colleagues from the Middle East technical University (METU). The agenda comprised a mixture of plenary sessions (introductory and reporting back), work package workshops and integrated workshops cutting across two or more work packages.

A new special issue in the journal "Hydrobiologia" appeared in March 2013, entitled "Water Bodies in Europe - integrative systems to assess ecological status and recovery". It summarises the results of the EU-funded project WISER (www.wiser.eu). The special issue includes 31 peer-reviewed papers, addressing the assessment and restoration of lakes, coastal and transitional waters, and rivers in Europe.

The beaver population is steadily increasing in the province of Limburg, the Netherlands. Since the introduction of 33 beavers in 2002, the population has increased to approximately 200 individuals. Recently, signs of beaver activity have been encountered at the REFRESH research location at the Groote Molenbeek.

As part of REFRESH efforts to 'ground-truth' its economic analysis a stakeholder workshop was held in Dunecht, Aberdeenshire, in September 2012, to gather local stakeholder views on how (dis)proportional and (un)evenly distributed the costs of measures to improve water quality are in relation to the benefits they provide in the Loch of Skene and Leuchar Burn sub-catchments in Scotland. Wider benefits of these measures beyond the water environment were also identified, through a participatory approach implemented via break-out groups and plenary discussions.