Freshwater ecosystems are biodiversity hot spots under tremendous anthropogenic stress at global and catchment scales (e.g. climate change, land use and hydropower). A key challenge of the 21st century is to understand and predict how freshwaters respond to the suite of stressors, and how we can sustain and restore these ecosystems at a large scale. Thus, a coherent framework is urgently needed to understand and predict how the suite of stressors influences functional diversity in freshwaters. FreshRestore will develop integrative models by utilizing data of lake abiotic parameters, fish communities and food webs across biogeographical gradients in Fennoscandia, combined with information on climate, land- and water-use, and mitigation efforts (e.g., habitat restorations). The ecological and socio-economic models will facilitate evaluation of the cost-efficiency of different nature-based solutions and elucidate how to improve biodiversity in lakes through different implementations.

2022

2025