River Ecosystem Service Index – Practical implementation in the Lahn river basin (RESI-Lahn)

Rivers and floodplains play an important role for people - from flood protection and water management to recreation and nature conservation. In order to demonstrate the wide range of ecosystem services, the project 'River Ecosystem Service Index (RESI)'  has developed an index. RESI provides a tool to quantify, evaluate and visualize various ecosystem services provided by rivers and their floodplains and thereby reveals the importance of river landscapes for human wellbeing. The RESI is intended to support spatial planning when considering possible courses of action, for example by showing the trade-offs between different sectoral uses and development goals. Communication between authorities and stakeholders is also facilitated by the mapping of ecosystem services and their change due to possible management alternatives.

The aim of this follow-up project is to apply the index for sections of the Lahn river landscape in cooperation with the integrated EU-LIFE project LiLa - Living Lahn . RESI-Lahn quantifies the supply of different ecosystem services and thus, supports their appropriate consideration in the ongoing process of a development concept for the Lahn waterway, which is partly characterized by divergent sectoral goals and use interests, such as hydropower, recreation and nature protection. The IÖW contributes to the project with quantifying and assessing provisioning ecosystem services.

Within the project there were created a video (only in german) depicting the potential of the Lahn River.