LIFE in Salt Marshes
This project, its full name: Complex ecological restoration of degraded and disappearing salt marshes in Moravian Pannonia, focuses on complex ecological restoration of 506 ha of wetlands located in the agricultural landscape of southern Moravia. This area consists of eight project locations, each a Natura2000 site. All the project locations include remnants of prioritised habitats, *1340 inland salt meadows, which are in a degraded and diminishing state. During the reporting period of 2013-2018, the inland salt meadows got an unfavourable/bad status on both national and international levels. The project locations are threatened by massive overgrowth of expansive and invasive species, eutrophication, nutrient pollution, disruption of natural water regime, lack of management, and consequent homogenization and loss of biodiversity.
Our aim is to restore and stabilise the areas, prioritising the habitats of inland salt marshes, renew the wetlands’ ecosystem functions, improve water quality and water retention, create new habitats and suitable conditions for targeted endangered wetland/salt meadow species, strengthen their populations and to increase overall biodiversity. The complex ecological restoration will combine traditional methods of management (grazing, controlled burning, mowing, turf disruption) together with innovative methods (introducing semi-parasitic plant species to limit growth of expansive and invasive plant species, supporting wetland flora by additional targeted sowing of regional seed mixtures, or employing the method of green hay from well-preserved wetland locations). Innovative methods will also be used to address the problem of water pollution and the negative effects of drainage. Those will include a complex hydro-chemical analysis and installation of close-to-nature biotechnical measures or natural small water retention measures. To verify the effects of the project activities, we will perform a detailed biomonitoring and quantitative analysis of ecosystem services and landscape heterogeneity, both before and after the project’s realisation.