BiodivERsA (03/17-02/20) project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Duration: March 2017 to February 2020

Riparian forests are biodiversity hotspots and migration corridors for biota that offer multiple additional functions and ecosystem services like nutrient retention, water temperature regulation, and recreation. Woody riparian buffer strips offer similar benefits that potentially add up and have positive effects far downstream in the river network. Therefore, developing a network of green corridors is among the most promising restoration measures in rivers to enhance biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services for men.

While the principal mechanisms how woody buffers enhance biodiversity and certain ecosystem functions are well understood, there is still a high uncertainty associated with quantifying these general effects. Moreover, most studies deal with the effects of individual woody buffers and there is very limited knowledge on how these effects depend on the spatial arrangement and add up at the catchment scale, and their function as migration corridors has hardly been studied as such. Though there are initial studies on ecosystem services provided by woody buffers, a comprehensive assessment of their ecosystem services and biodiversity is missing.

The existing knowledge on the effect of woody buffers on biodiversity, functions like nutrient retention and water temperature regulation, and ecosystem services is complemented by own studies - especially on large-scale and downstream effects. A set of knowledge rules is developed and applied in different scenarios in four case-study catchments to derive management recom-mendations how to optimize the overall effect of woody riparian buffers.

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