The Floodplain Meadows Partnership is hosted by the Open University, Department of Life Sciences, where there have been many years’ worth of research on the ecology of floodplain meadows.
It is an innovative project focussing on research, management, promotion and restoration of rare and declining floodplain meadows in England and Wales.
The Partnership will bring researchers, site managers, conservation practitioners, landowners, local communities, and policy makers together to develop a shared objective of protecting and enhancing these beautiful but rare and threatened meadows based on scientific research carried out within the department.
The Partnership will undertake long term monitoring on some of the best remaining sites across England and Wales to improve knowledge about plant community responses to environmental change. The dissemination of this information to all those involved in the conservation, management and restoration of floodplain meadows is crucial to the success of the project. We will be running short courses, and workshops and providing helpful publications and literature that summarise the latest knowledge.
We would like to find out more about projects around the country that are restoring species rich floodplain meadows and share examples of successes and lessons learned using these as demonstration sites.
Specific Objectives are:
• To help establish best practise through use of case studies to promote restoration and re-creation schemes with the aim of increasing the extent of floodplain meadows by 200ha by 2015.
• To assist partners with the development and revision of management plans, as and when they come up for review, by drawing on relevant scientific data.
• To collaborate with appropriate partners to disseminate knowledge to managers and society as a whole.
• To advance scientific knowledge on meadows especially with regard to global change and its implications for nature conservation.
