Interviewing the Urban Algae project (1): Funding ECR projects

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The  Urban Algae project aims to acquire novel knowledge about ecosystem services and the ecological status of ponds in urban areas.
Ponds are defined as standing freshwaters <5 hectares (sometimes <1 hectare) and are usually shallow. Although ponds make a large proportion of European surface waters, they are are not included in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). By sampling different ponds in many European cities, such as Berlin (Germany) or Sofia (Bulgaria) we want to investigate the ecological status of these small freshwaters. For this, we make use of the WFD evaluation criteria for the ecological status of freshwaters.

Special about Urban Algae is that it links natural science and social science to bridge important gaps between science, society and management of small freshwaters. In a second part of the project, we developed and conducted a citizens’ survey to find out how people value certain characteristics of a pond and if they would value the ponds we have sampled, according to their ecological status. For this, we included pictures of some of “our” ponds and asked people to rate them regarding certain ecosystem services such as the provision of habitat for animals or flood prevention.
Collaboration is the key part of the project and determines the way we work and the way the project is structured. We are ~100 people in our consortium, divided into 30 international teams. A multicultural setting, some interdisciplinarity and the aspect that we are in different stages of our careers (from master student to postdoc researcher) give us the opportunity for peer-coaching and we all benefit from it.

 Who funds it?
FreshProject 2.0 is funded and organized by the European Federation of Freshwater Sciences (EFFS), the European Fresh and Young Researchers (EFYR), and representatives of the Fresh Blood for Fresh Water (FBFW) meetings. In particular, the money comes from 8 national limnological associations in Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Spain/Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The FreshProject 2.0 project has a total budget of 8,000 €, with added support from the Netherland Institute of Ecology  and the Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in particular for the Urban Algae project.
           
What have you achieved so far?
At this moment (January 2020) we have achieved almost all milestones. In particular, the 30 Urban Algae teams have conducted the pond samplings in their cities (July-August 2018) and the water samples were analyzed for different parameters, like nutrient and chlorophyll-a concentrations). The citizens survey to assess how people perceive urban ponds has been developed, prepared and released in August 2019. The survey was online for about three months and we got about 2,000 responses. Now, the last important phase has started and encompasses data analyses, evaluation of results and finally the preparation of scientific output.

How did this collaboration start?
 Where did the leaders/coordinators meet and come up with the idea?
The idea of Urban Algae was first created by Sonia Herrero and Cleo Stratmann and further developed together with Mandy Velthuis and Susanne Stephan. During 2016 Sonia and Cleo worked closely together. As Sonia has participated in the FreshProject 1.0 they have decided to participate in the next competition with their own idea. They had sampled many small water bodies before and knew that they were not considered in the WFD - that was the reason they decided to do further research on urban ponds - so the first idea was born. At this time, Susanne Stephan was also a PhD candidate at IGB and has also worked with Cleo and Sonia. Previously, Susanne executed her master thesis in the Netherlands at the NIOO where she worked together with Mandy Velthuis. We have all similar interests and expertise working with freshwaters, algae, macrophytes and nutrients and hence created the Urban Algae coordinators team.
           
  Where did you submit this idea?
Together, we wrote a project proposal, according to the EFFS criteria and submitted the proposal online in the middle of January 2018 to the EFFS board.
           
  Had you thought of submitting to another society or funding institution if this call had not worked out?
No, we were only aware of the FreshProject competitions from EFFS and no further project competitions were known to us. Because we were being employed and in the middle of our PhDs and projects, FreshProject provided a great opportunity to lead your first own science project on a professional level, next to your everyday-science business.


For more information:

  3. FBFW (website changes every years, because it is a volunteer-based event
    without a fixed leading team) -     http://fbfw2019.okologia.mta.hu 

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