Background

  Sediments have mainly concerned water managers confronted with man-made sediment-traps, especially when associated contamination poses an environmental or human risk. More and more water managers, port authorities and researchers express the need to exchange internationally, at least at the river basin level, these local experiences and to develop sediment management guidelines based on a multidisciplinary, coordinated and harmonised approach. Due to trans-boundaries, no single water manager or country has the responsibility for solving sediment management problems at the river basin level.

SEDNET Objectives

  SEDNET seeks to provide a European platform where organisations responsible for the sustainable management of sediments and related dredged material (problem owners) can meet and communicate with organisations that help to provide solutions to their problems, in the form of tools, knowledge and expertise needed for that management. This platform will support, catalyse, optimise or facilitate: (1) demand driven research activities, (2) clustering of these activities, (3) co-operation between problem solvers and problem owners, (4) dissemination to, and exploitation of knowledge by problem owners, (5) publication of research results and (6) inform public and decision-makers. Furthermore, SEDNET aims to complement existing European Union networks and thematic working groups and wishes to be an advisory board to European, national and regional authorities on sediment issues, and indirectly assist with their policy implementation. Finally, the main objective will be the preparation of a joint document, containing recommendations and guidelines for integrated, sustainable sediment management, from local to river basin level.

Knowledge exchange

  SEDNET will provide a European platform to facilitate information and knowledge exchange via: (1) annual conferences, open to all organisations interested in sediment issues, (2) freely accessible proceedings of these conferences, (3) participation of SEDNET participants in specific thematic Working Group (WG) meetings, (4) dissemination of state of the art sediment documents via the website, (5) provide an electronic billboard where organisations can communicate with each other and leave their sediment announcements and related questions, (6) spreading of a newsletter to the SEDNET participants (7) and report on SEDNET activities in a column in the new Journal of Soils and Sediments.

  SEDNET participants, at this moment already more then 200, origin from 20 different countries and various types of organisations (more then 145). Contact to, and participation of sediment specialists outside Europe will be stimulated. SEDNET will keep in close contact with other networks by organizing meetings at Steering Committee (SC) level and by inviting specialists from these networks to give lectures on specific subjects of interest in SC and WG meetings. SEDNET participants will be encouraged and assisted to write demand driven, sediment oriented RTD proposals. A problem catalogue and an overview of current sediment research projects will be prepared in order to prevent the wheel being reinvented.