Last week, a Focus group on ecological restoration was held in České Budějovice as part of the TEAM#UP project. The goal was clear—to fine-tune the teaching materials that we use to feed the DERTO platform (derto.teamup2restore.eu). All essential information on the topic of ecological restoration will be collected there and made available to a wide range of users. We also discussed the long-term sustainability of the platform and materials, as well as the best way to support the teaching of ecological restoration in VET schools. The meeting was particularly fruitful thanks to the fact that it brought together a very diverse group of people with different perspectives on the issue – from the private, public, academic, and non-governmental sectors.
#TeamUp2Restore
The intensive cooperation with our partner secondary vocational school in Benešov continues. On Monday, we conducted training there on creating virtual tours in LUMI. The training was attended not only by students, who used it to process material acquired during our earlier excursion to the revitalized stream in Benešov, but also teachers, who will pass the knowledge to their students. The training was skillfully led by our students, Ester Šůsová and Šimon Cais. If you are interested in creating virtual tours, check out our newly created 
Help us improve the newly launched beta version of our educational platform, the Digital Ecological Restoration Toolbox (DERTO)! This platform offers freely accessible educational materials in the field of ecological restoration.
This year's in-person meeting of the TEAM#UP Steering Committee took place in Norway. Since our working group is involved in all parts of this interesting and promising project, we could not miss this meeting. During the introductory excursion, we visited the restored peat bog, which served as a demonstration site for various peat bog restoration methods for students from a partner Norwegian vocational school Norges grønne fagskole - Vea. We then moved to the classroom, where we summarized the project's achievements and progress to date and set goals for the coming year. In the evening, we had the opportunity to visit the school surroundings, where other demonstration and experimental sites were established and monitored by students.
Every year, we attend conferences organized by the Society for Ecological Restoration to gather new ideas and share experiences. This year, six representatives of our Restoration Ecology Group attended the 11th World Conference on Ecological Restoration in Denver, USA. The topics of our takls follow our ongoing projects - Anička Müllerová gave a presentation on the restoration of springs, Kamila Vítovcová shared her experience with monitoring the degradation of peat bogs, Klára Řehounková and Petra Janečková shared their experience with extensive green roofs, Miguel Ballesteros focused on spontaneous succession on former arable fields across Europe, and Karel Prach spoke about non-native species and whether or not they pose a threat during succession. Conferences on ecological restoration are not only a unique opportunity to meet colleagues from different parts of the world, but they also help us to objectively assess our work.
On Tuesday, September 16, a discussion entitled Green Roofs and Biodiversity, organized by Calla and the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia, took place at the Horká Vana club in České Budějovice.
On Monday, September 15, a professional seminar entitled Green Roofs as a Place for Biodiversity was held at the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, organized by Calla – Association for Environmental Protection together with the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia. Participants learned about the importance of green roofs for plants, pollinators, and architecture, as well as the possibilities for establishing them using regional seeds. The afternoon was devoted to practical demonstrations – in the 4Dvory city park, we tried out a brushing machine for harvesting seeds and then visited two green roofs: a biodiversity roof on a family house and a sedum roof with herbs sown on a supermarket.
The new school year has just begun, and we have already completed intensive field training with students from the Agricultural College and Agricultural Secondary School Benešov on the topic of water retention in the landscape and the revitalization of watercourses. We spent the morning visiting two examples of revitalization that took place at different locations along the Benešov brook. The students had the opportunity to see the revitalized stream bed and several newly created pools, where we showed them how revitalization contributes to slowing down water runoff from the landscape, but also what to avoid in order to ensure successful restoration. Students also caught aquatic orgamisms. Among the finds were mayfly larvae, but also the predatory water scorpion Nepa cinerea. In the afternoon, we summarized our field findings in a comprehensive lecture on the importance of water in the landscape. We also gave examples of aquatic and wetland ecosystems in our landscape, the problems they currently face, and the possibilities for their revitalization. With the help of samples of several types of substrate, the students were able to test how well different substrate types are able to retain water. Students could verify their assumptions, and see how soil quality affects, for example, the risk of flooding. Using a model of a riverine landscape, we showed how a watercourse in a natural riverbed functions as protection against the formation of a rapid flood wave.
