Natuurlijke zuivering (BO-43-203-003, BO-43-123-004)

Despite the execution of many restoration projects and investments in reducing the loads of pollutants in surface waters, the ecological water quality in the Dutch surface waters remains behind and goals are not met. Optimisation of natural filtering or self-cleaning of surface waters could contribute to improvement of ecological water quality status. The goal of this project is to gain insight into the processes that determine the natural filtering capacity of aquatic systems and to study the opportunities and methods to make use of and enhance that capacity. To this purpose, available research will be evaluated, and new experimental research executed to identify and quantify the conditions under which different functional (species)groups optimally contribute to processes of degradation, uptake and conversion. Furthermore, the contribution of trophic cascades to natural filtering processes will be quantified. The acquired knowledge will be applied to make a blueprint for use and maintenance of different natural filtering types and the enhancement of natural filtering capacity to reach ecological water quality objectives in practice.