Department Water Resources and Drinking Water

Mountainous countries like Switzerland are overproportionally affected by climate change, with temperature rise and increasing weather extremes such as heat waves, droughts, and torrential rainfalls already being more pronounced than elsewhere. Under these circumstances, water supply is becoming a major challenge for agriculture, be it for crop production or animal husbandry. In addition, water in mountain communities becomes increasingly scarce during summer months. This is where the Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture FOAG-funded "Slow Water" project comes in: In 3 hydrologically and geographically distinct pilot regions of Switzerland, farm-specific, catchment-related water retention strategies are developed and implemented based on a catalogue of 15+ different nature-based water retention measures, through a co-creation process involving municipalities, farmers, authorities and scientists. The integral impacts of the nature-based water retention measures on increasing water availability and decreasing streamflow extremes are assessed through a combination of hydrological monitoring, drone-based assessments and numerical modelling.

The Slow Water project consortium consists of the Hydrogeology research group of University of Basel and Eawag, the Global Land Use and Change group of University of Basel, the agricultural offices of the Cantons of Basel-Landschaft (Ebenrain) and Luzern (LAWA), Seecon GmbH, Agridea, municipalities and farming associations.