Four Mediterranean based organisations active in science based wetland management that form part of the MedWet network will exchange knowledge with Estonia based Tartu University to build on and advance existing  methods for inventorying wetlands. Their collaboration will result in an innovative web-hosted tool providing easy to use information on the location, ecological characteristics and socio-economic importance of water related ecosystems.
 
Designed to assist towards reporting against the European Water Framework Directive  as well as the Directive for the protection of sensitive Habitats the project will contribute to facilitating improved wetland management in line with goals adopted by European Union member countries.

Remote Sensing and Satellite Imaging will be among the new features to be incorporated into the inventorying tool.  Data on the location and surface area of wetland systems will be derived from satellite images in Serbia and Cyprus will be processed and stored on the internet hosted tool. Additionally data on wetland inventories from another four Mediterranean countries will be organised, customized and stored on the tool as a start up basis of information to assist towards monitoring and reporting on the state of Mediterranean wetlands.

Training offered to local and regional authorities in the Mediterranean basin will aim to disseminate information on the new tool and encourage its use.

Donwload project documents describing individual components:

▪Exchange of existing knowledge and expertise on inventorying water related ecosystems in order to revise the MedWet inventory method for meeting new EU obligations and adapting new technologies (Earth Observation products)

▪Establish mechanisms for data exchange focusing on earning state’s obligation producing protocols and developing tools (web based information system)

▪Argue governments on the needfulness of their participation in the network for inventorying and monitoring water related ecosystems and convince them to store their inentory data sets into the MedWet web information system in order to fulfill the aim of reversing wetland damaging

▪Seek the involvement of the European dimension (ie wetlands could be set as a separate priority topic in the framework of Water directive)