Water and nutrient retention using bio-inspired drainage filters in the agriculture landscape, Austria

This work is part of WATERAGRI, an H2020 research and innovation project aiming to re-introduce and enhance water retention and nutrient cycling solutions to enable sustainable agriculture and cope with climate change challenges. Preserving water resources in view of population increase and climate change is a significant environmental challenge (UN, 2016). Management of water resources can reduce pollution, supporting sustainable agricultural food production and ecosystems in line with the bio-economy concept (EC, 2012). Wateragri addresses the topic of integrated water management in small agricultural catchments. The project aims to re-introduce nature-based solutions, such as constructed wetlands and bio-inspired drainage systems in the agricultural landscape, leading to better water retention and nutrient retention. Through this pilot, we implemented a bio-inspired multi-layer drainage system in farmland. Agricultural run-off has high spatiotemporal flow variability (winter/summer) and low nitrogen and phosphorus concentration. alchemia-nova, in collaboration with BOKU, has developed a multi-layer vertical filter system to address such agricultural runoff on the slope of an agricultural field in Mistelbach, Austria. The goal was to construct a pilot bio-inspired multi-layer filter system and study its ability to retain nutrients present in agricultural runoff.