Small Water Retention Program in Forests (lowlands) of Poland

Forest ecosystems in Poland have long suffered from drought. From the mid-90s, the Polish forest management authority undertook a variety of small-scale water retention works, financed from a combination of its own and external funds (i.e. the Polish Ecofund, and the Polish National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management). In 2006, the authority consolidated all its initiatives into a single project ‘Increasing retention and preventing floods and droughts in forest ecosystems in lowland.’ It is the first to be conducted on such a large scale, combining water retention in forest ecosystems with the protection against surface water run-off. The project is funded by EU Cohesion Fund, 2007-2013.