Project objectives in Lake Vesijärvi Foundation

1. Functioning and improvement of water protection structures
  • Vesijärvisäätiö will monitor together with land owners how well the existing water protection structures (sedimentation pools, wetlands) work.
  • At the same time valuable information is gathered, which type of structures are best and how inefficient structures could be improved.
  • Simple tools for the land owners for monitoring and maintenance.
2. Promotion and communication about natural based field drainage
  • Vesijärvisäätiö funds measures that promote the use of natural based field drainage and a pilot example of natural based field drainage for the farmers
3. T-Bar –marking of fish to reveal their migrations
  • Vesijärvisäätiö will finance the T-Bar –marking of fish to reveal their migrations within the lake. This involve local fishermen in gathering data and give valuable information for targeting management fishing.
4. Development and construction of management fishing gears
  • Vesijärvisäätiö funds the voluntary working week for the construction of management fishing gears. New gears are needed, which work in blooms of net fouling algae.
5. Creating a web based service for collecting fishing data
  • Vesijärvisäätiö participates the work of LUVY in the development of web based service.
6. Targeting the management efforts in different parts of Lake Vesijärvi
  • Vesijärvisäätiö collects and combines information from different parts of Lake Vesijärvi to evaluate the role of external loading and food web effects for algal blooms.
  • Basic idea is to gather essential information for targeting the management efforts efficiently in different parts of Lake Vesijärvi.
7. Monitoring of net fouling algae together with local fishermen
  • Vesijärvisäätiö organizes a monitoring and reporting system of the net fouling algae for local fishermen. Basic idea is to gather information of the existence, timing and intensity of net fouling algae in different parts of the lake.
  • Vesijärvisäätiö funds net fouling monitoring actions.
8. Involvement of local residents in water protection and monitoring
  • Vesijärvisäätiö organizes “water quality observation days”. The aim is to try citizen science method involving locals to water quality monitoring and find local interest in gathering data of water transparency and algal blooms for monitoring purposes.
9. Development of reed management plans
  • Vesijärvisäätiö organizes workshop inviting different interest groups for making reed management plans.
  • The aim is to take into consideration the different aspects of reed beds for birds, fish, water quality and recreation to find best practices in the management of reed beds.
10. Winter mowing and the development of mowing methods and logistics
  • Vesijärvisäätiö funds winter mowing and the concurrent development of mowing methods.
11. Enhancing the use of reed as raw material
  • Vesijärvisäätiö promotes the use of reed as raw material in local enterprises.
12. International cooperation and networking for finding and sharing best practices and knowhow
  • Vesijärvisäätiö will organize two international workshops in its region and participate in workshops organized by other project partners for changing knowledge and ideas in themes related to lake restoration and fisheries management.
  • Vesijärvisäätiö has the main responsibility of international connections and follow-up of partners’ activities.
  • Vesijärvisäätiö has the main responsibility of updating the international web page, controlling the content and organizing all information in a way that is the most useful for all.
13 Synthesis of best practices
  • Vesijärvisäätiö is in charge of creating the synthesis of best practices and also takes responsibility of IT-costs related to the manual.