AquaPLAN Annual Meeting 2025

The AquaPLAN Annual Meeting took place online from 27-28 January 2025. The meeting included a series of presentations from AquaPLAN researchers providing progress updates from each of the six work packages (WPs), followed by interactive discussions and planning activities for the year to come. The AquaPLAN EC Project Officer Colombe Warin attended along with representatives from our sister project PLAN-B.

Day one was kicked off with an AquaPLAN Steering Committee meeting. The Steering Committee (SC) is the decision-making body of AquaPLAN and consists of one representative from each project participant. It oversees the operational management of all activities of the project and also supervises the scientific and technical execution of the project, in particular it is tasked with inviting relevant stakeholders to the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and Stakeholder Innovation Board (SIB) and integrate the recommendations from those Boards. Meet our SC members here.

Our General Meeting started in the afternoon with a welcome and overview of our first year from our Coordinator Elena Maggi and our Project Manager Alessandro Marchetti (University of Pisa (UNIPI)). Next our EC Project Officer Colombe Warin summarised the EC’s expectations for AquaPLAN’s implementation as well as a few tps and key dates for our diaries! The remainder of day one will filled with updates from our WP6 lead ERINN Innovation (ERINN) which covered the progress and upcoming plans for our dissemination, exploitation, communication and outreach activities within AquaPLAN. This was followed by insightful talks from our sister project PLAN-B’s Yana Yakushina (University of Ghent) and Mike Wood (University of Salford) and potential collaborations were discussed with the Portuguese organisation FCiências.ID. Their research is focused on amphibians in urban freshwater habitats such as ponds and rivers.

Day two focused on progress updates from the four scientific WPs 2-5. Topics covered included reviewing the state of the art, monitoring of exposure of biodiversity to light and noise pollution (LNP) combined risks, evaluation of mechanisms of impacts of LNP on biodiversity, and the assessment of potential mitigation solutions. A packed agenda but all the latest advances in our research were presented and discussed. Representatives from both our SAB and SIB were present and particularly enjoyed the insightful discussions.

We are already looking to our next Annual Meeting which is planned to take place in February 2026, location to be confirmed, stay tuned!