INHABIT project

Five workshops have been held during INHABIT project, of whom 2 national and 3 international. Workshops have been an important dissemination tool, contributing in spreading the project themes to a public audience, working in different ways on water topics. Such events were also an occasion for verifying the applicability of INHABIT approach and results. Other than Universities, scientific Institutes and Environment agencies, workshops have been participated by government officers, environmental ONGs, scientific consultants and water managers.
Workshops contents are here briefly presented, listed in chronological order. In the different sections it is possible to download the agenda and, where available, the presentations. Some pictures of the workshops are also available.

Proceedings of national (in Italian) and international (in English) workshops are also available’

• First International INHABIT workshop on rivers
  
• First National INHABIT workshop
  
• Second International INHABIT workshop on rivers
  
• Third International INHABIT workshop on rivers
  
• Second National INHABIT workshop
  

First International INHABIT workshop on rivers

This INHABIT event fits with the 20th anniversary of the LIFE Programme!!

On date October, 17th 2012, the first International INHABIT workshop on rivers was held in Barcelona, hosted by Universitat de Barcelona. You can download the programme here.

The workshop addressed to a relatively small number of participants (15-20 people) including mainly scientists, water managers and representatives from Environmental Agencies. The idea was to discuss topics related to habitat and hydromorphology assessment under the particular focus of habitat-biota relationships (INHABIT approach) and potential nutrient retention. The main aims of the workshop were:

• to disseminate INHABIT project approaches and methodologies and first results obtained;
• to discuss about the needs for integrating habitat information when setting assessement systems for the evaluation of ecological status in Mediterranean rivers: e.g. typology refinements needed?
• to discuss the importance of linking hydromorphological/habitat and hydrology to biological communities (BQEs) when characterizing the ecological status sensu WFD. Such aspects are especially relevant in Mediterranean streams inherently exposed to high natural variability (e.g. spatial heterogeneity, climate, hydrology and droughts);
• to finally focus on the possibility of using habitat information when classifying ecological status – data and examples from aquatic invertebrates.

As well, further goals referred to:

• present results gained in the INHABIT project in relation to nutrient retention and habitat parameters;
• evaluate INHABIT project results applicability at a wider geographical scale (i.e. South Europe);
• briefly discuss additional items and problems of national/international interest especially relevant for South European river management (flow unpredictability of Mediterranean rivers, river typology in Med area, RBMPs sensu WFD, etc.).

Finally, some discussion were devoted to the need for integrating the ‘actual water level’ (i.e. the observed situation when sampling) with the ‘hydrological history’ (i.e. what happened in a relevant period before). On this regard, some focus may be placed on the proposal by Gallart et al. (2012) of ‘Aquatic states’ (outcome of the MIRAGE project).
Presentations are available at the download page.

First National INHABIT workshop

This INHABIT event fits with the 20th anniversary of the LIFE Programme!!

On date December, 11-12th 2012, the first National INHABIT workshop was held in Cagliari, hosted by Regione Sardegna. You can download the programme here and presentations from the Download page. [please refer to the Italian section of the web site for more details].

Second International INHABIT workshop on rivers

On date February, 15th 2013, the second International INHABIT workshop on rivers was held in Vienna, hosted by Lebensministerium (Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management) You can download the programme here.
Austrian ministerial officers, environment agencies and scientific institutes participated in the workshop. The workshop has dealt with topics related to evaluation of hydromorphological and habitat conditions in streams with reference to relations habitat-biota (INHABIT approach) and related to nutrient retention. Other than the themes common to the other international workshop, linked to the presentation of INHABIT approach, dissemination of project results and possible integration of habitat aspects into monitoring procedures, in Vienna workshop possible measures, related to habitat and hydromorphology to be adopted for RBMPs implementation have been discussed. General discussion has mainly dealt with the methods for collecting information on habitat in Austria and Italy, with reference to the integration of such information into RBMPs.
Presentations are available here.

Third International INHABIT workshop on rivers

On date February, 28th 2013, the third International INHABIT workshop on rivers is being held in Nicosia (Cyprus), hosted by WDD - Water Development Department of Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment of the Republic of Cyprus. You can download the programme here.
The workshop was addressed to representatives from the Water Development Department, the Fisheries and Marine Research Department and other Cyprus Governmental Departments, to environmental NGOs and consultancies as well as to water managers and scientists.
The workshop has considered two separate sessions: in the first INHABIT project has been presented and topics related to habitat and hydromorphology assessment under the particular focus of habitat-biota relationships has been discussed (INHABIT approach). In the second session, more specifically led by the hosting institute  - WDD -, the results of applied research programs performed in Cyprus to support the WFD implementation have been presented. Such results have included outcomes from three Biological Quality Elements used in river monitoring:  fish, macrophytes and benthic invertebrates.
The main aims of the workshop has been:

• to disseminate INHABIT project approaches and methodologies, and present some of the obtained results;
• to discuss about the need for integrating habitat information when setting assessment systems for the evaluation of ecological status;
• to discuss the importance of linking hydromorphology/habitat and hydrology to biological communities (BQEs) when characterizing ecological status sensu WFD, with some effort on possible measures, to be applied for the implementation of RBMPs;
• to briefly discuss additional items and problems of national/international interest especially relevant for Southern European river management (flow unpredictability of Mediterranean rivers, river typology in the Mediterranean area, RBMPs sensu WFD, etc.);
• to provide an update of data availability and ecological status assessment approaches in Cyprus rivers for all BQEs;
• to summarize the overall biological quality of Cyprus rivers for each BQE;
• to finally focus on the possibility of using habitat information when classifying ecological status i.e. impressively increasing classification accuracy – data and examples from aquatic invertebrates

Second National INHABIT workshop

On date March, 27th 2013, the second National INHABIT workshop was held in Rome, hosted by University La Sapienza. You can download the programme here. [please refer to the Italian section of the web site for more details]