
Working Group 5: Transitions of connectivity research towards sustainable land and water management
Until now, connectivity research has mainly been carried out by natural scientists and important linkages and feedbacks with drivers of water and land management remained poorly studied. This WG will link connectivity research with stakeholders involved in water and land management and the socio-hydrological community to improve decision-making processes, adapting model-based scenarios of connectivity to management applications for water availability (e.g. networks of reservoirs), soil conservation, natural hazard and environmental pollution (e.g. sudden flows of contaminants).
The working group Connectivity and Society will work towards:
• the production of a framework for predictive modelling applications and land-management decision-support.
• the organisation of a set of guidelines for land- and water-management practitioners on how to deal with connected pathways and water- and land-surface processes on sudden (dis)connection of landscapes for hazard prevention.
• the effective dissemination and demonstration projects for land and water management.
WG5 will build on the outcomes of the other four packages: translating aspects of connectivity theory (WG1) to the socio-hydrological community through developing a common language, comparing and adapting connectivity monitoring guidelines (WG2) and existing state-of-the-art guidelines, transferring the output of scenario-based models and indices of connectivity (WG3 and WG4) to decision-making protocols.
The working group leaders of WG5 are:
Eva Paton (email)
Tamara Hochstrasser (email)