The complex interlink between safeguarding water quantity and quality for human usage and biodiversity during hydroclimatic extreme events in Europe

Due to the accelerating hydro-climatic extreme events, there is high demand on adjusting water resources management so that water quantity and quality are secured through a combination of different techniques integrating land-use, surface water, groundwater, and ecosystem management. The Project Interlayer focuses on how water retention technologies can contribute to improve resilience, adaptation and mitigation to hydroclimatic extreme events while increasing water availability and quality by balancing groundwater and surface water management practices. It is related to shared interdisciplinary knowledge in the complex interlink of flood protection, safeguarding water availability and quality to mitigate and adapt to hydroclimatic extreme events. Interlayer will develop and demonstrate novel water retention technologies that favor slow hydrology entrance in the system for adaptation of European river basins to hydro-climatic extreme events and simultaneously obtain resilience in agricultural productive land, the adjacent ecosystems, and downstream cities. Farmland can stay productive despite hydro-climatic extreme events through smart water harvesting methods, adapted soil and cropping management, improved ecosystem management, temperature buffering by means of appropriate riparian vegetation management and establishment of adequate refugia system for biodiversity (including definition of appropriate protected pools). Risk of urban flooding is reduced by parking of water not only in the river valleys upstream from the city, but also in the highlands of the catchments, reducing runoff from uphill as part of the water harvesting to address drought. Hydro-climatic water balance models will be demonstrated to describe the exchange of water within the river basins between highland and lowland and between shallow and deep groundwater, in response to suggested changes in land-use management.