WAT-CHANGE - Water-related ecosystem services for adapting societies to climate change

A one-week crash-course on nature-based solutions at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – Pisa (Italy)

While climate change is posing at risk traditional water resources management, there is the urgent need to devise low-energy and low-impact solutions to adapt the environment, societies and economies to this threat.

The WAT-CHANGE Seasonal School aims at introducing the participants to the new growing area of nature-based solutions providing water-related ecosystem services following a cross-disciplinary approach.

In particular, we will deal with nature-based solutions for water supply, treatment of polluted water, and flood risk mitigation such as managed aquifer recharge, river restoration, constructed wetlands, and sustainable drainage systems.

The course is based on 20 hours of interactive and cross-disciplinary learning from academia and the professional world along with hours dedicated to field work and performing chemical analyses. Two site visits will put in touch the students with real blue-infrastructures. In particular,  we will visit:

-             the Massaciuccoli wetland and the phytotreatment area for treating the nutrient-rich rural drainage;

-             the ecohydrological infrastructures of the Val di Cornia area. This area has recently been recognized by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Hydrological Program as a site of global importance for ecohydrology.

During the field visits we will learn how to monitor and to sample surface water and groundwater.

A 4-hour workshop (Nature-based solutions in the WEFE NEXUS real world. Application, case studies and market perspectives) will allow showcasing technical solutions, along with the market and the regulatory perspective and the state of the application of nature-based solutions in the real world.

At the end of the course the students will have the knowledge and skills to understand impact and functions of the main nature-based solutions for solving the most common water resources management problems and to start their design.

WHAT IS A SEASONAL SCHOOL AT SCUOLA SUPERIORE SANT’ANNA The Seasonal Schools are short, intensive, excellence training programmes, strongly interdisciplinary, and focused on the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna frontier research topics. They are open to University students enrolled in Bachelor Degree, Masters’ Degree and PhD courses, with same grade characteristics as the School’s students. The Seasonal Schools are also opportunities for meetings and exchanges with other high- students from all Italy as well as from abroad, to get experience of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna facilities and laboratories.

For further information, please contact  Rudy.rossetto@santannapisa.it