The AFaktive project implementation officially started in Voeren, Belgium. On the AFaktive pilot site, swales were installed.
Swales are shallow wide channels covered in vegetation that have different functions for water management, from erosion control and water filtration, to flood protection – especially thanks to slow water infiltration. Agroforestry systems have similar water management functions acting, inter alia, on both erosion / flood protection and water retention. Therefore, agroforestry and swales structures complement each other and – combined – increase the water performance of a particular agricultural field.
On this field, an agroforestry system will be implemented in early 2025. In this way, the AFaktive team will be able to observe the combined effect of agroforestry and swales.
Furthermore, the activities in Voeren are also a nice example of how the local pilot level and the regional level can result in an interesting blended approach. While starting from a local focus on the fields of Hof Mabrouck, the AFaktive Belgian team soon entered into a regional level, with further implementations at Reesberg and Rode Bos in the same municipality, and with the people from the “Regionaal Landschap” as key regional actors in the context of the cross-border landscape park “bocageland”.
Copyright: Instituut voor Landbouw, Visserij- en Voedingsonderzoek (ILVO)