CLEARANCE-CircuLar Economy Approach to River pollution by Agricultural Nutrients with use of Carbon-storing Ecosystems

Riverine wetlands provide a range of ecosystem services: cultural (esthetics, recreation and education), provisioning (storage and retention of water), supporting (soil formation and nutrient cycling), regulating (regulation of erosion, natural hazards, hydrological flows, climate, water purification and waste treatment). The project CLEARANCE focuses on the role of wetland buffer zones (WBZ) in agricultural catchments that clean water from excess nutrients before it reaches the river, as well as substantially contribute to the natural purification of river water. The project aims to demonstrate this role of WBZs using model catchments, while at the same time examining synergies between water purification and other ecosystem services. More

Main outputs

  • Walton C.R., Zak D., Audet J., Petersen R.J., Lange J., Oehmke C., Wichtmann W., Kreyling J., Grygoruk M., Jabłońska E., Kotowski W., Wiśniewska M.M., Ziegler R., Hoffmann C.C. 2020. Wetland buffer zones for nitrogen and phosphorus retention: Impacts of soil type, hydrology and vegetation. Science of the Total Environment 727, 138709. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138709 (non-open access)

  • Jabłońska E., Winkowska M., Wiśniewska M., Geurts J., Zak D., Kotowski W. 2020. Impact of vegetation harvesting on nutrient removal and plant biomass quality in wetland buffer zones. Hydrobiologia, published: 28 April 2020. Jabłońska E., Wiśniewska M., Marcinkowski P., Grygoruk M., Walton C.R., Zak D., Hoffmann C.C., Larsen S.E., Trepel M., Kotowski W. 2020. Catchment-Scale Analysis Reveals High Cost-Effectiveness of Wetland Buffer Zones as a Remedy to Non-Point Nutrient Pollution in North-Eastern Poland. Water 12, 629.

  • Ziegler R. 2019. Viewpoint – Water innovation for a circular economy: The contribution of grassroots actors. Water Alternatives 12(2): 774-787.

  • Ziegler R. 2020. Paludiculture as a critical sustainability innovation mission. Research Policy 49, 103979.

  • Rodzkin, A., Kundas, S. & Wichtmann, W. 2017. Life cycle assessment of biomass production from drained wetlands areas for composite briquettes fabrication. Energy Procedia 09/2017; 128:261-267.

  • Kotowski W., Jabłońska E. (Eds.), and Giergiczny M., Grygoruk M., Oehmke C., Valasiuk S., Wichtmann W., Wiśniewska M., Wilk M., Zak D. 2020. Wetland buffer zones: the solution we need! Brochure of the CLEARANCE project. 48 pp

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source https://www.moorwissen.de/en/paludikultur/projekte/clearance/index.php
Project coordinator Wiktor Kotowski
Last Updated April 25, 2022, 09:47 (UTC)
Created November 21, 2018, 10:00 (UTC)
Acronym CLEARANCE
Contact personsfor Dissemination activities - Open Data&Open Acces activities Marta Wisniewska
Coordinator Wiktor Kotowski
Project partners University of Warsaw; Warsaw University of life Science;green-management-group-gmg;university of greifswald;leibniz-institute-of-freshwater-ecology-and-inland-fisheries-igb; aarhus-university;university-of-nijmegen-un;
Access level info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Project identifier grantAgreement/EC/FP7/244909/EU/Making Capabilities Work/WorkAble
Start date May 1, 2017, 00:00 (UTC)
End date unknown