The second meeting of the Waterwise project took place in Avigliana, in the Italian province of Piedmont, to discuss the activities carried out during the first year of the project, to exchange good practices and to share experiences from similar projects. The aim of the European project Waterwise is the management of source watersheds in the Alpine region, which includes Slovenia.

In spring and summer 2025, 12 partners together collected over 150 water samples from the entire water cycle (precipitation, streams, groundwater) from eight pilot sites in the Central Alps and the Karavanke Mountains. Together with the UNESCO Global Geopark Karavanke, GeoZS collected eight groundwater samples from the most important karst springs on the Slovenian and Austrian sides of the Peka River, as well as from the Topla and Mežica mines. Together with our partners at the University of Neuchatel, we are testing the hypothesis that the chemical and isotopic composition of the water has changed perceptibly over the decades due to the effects of climate change and land use change. In collaboration with the Edmund Mach Foundation in Italy, we are also determining for the first time the ecological status of these waters by detecting the presence of microscopic diatoms, a type of siliceous algae. By October 2025, we have set up 8 demersals at altitudes between 600 and 2000 metres above sea level on both sides of the Pec river. In November, the first monthly water samples were collected for isotopes, which will help us to decipher how fast and where these infiltrated precipitations are reaching the surface.

At a partnership meeting in Avigliana, we took delivery of two newly developed Smart Rock devices, which enable continuous measurements of physico-chemical water parameters. They will shortly be tested in a water tunnel in the Mežica mine and then moved to the Topla stream and the Mežica river.

You can see some of the highlights of our fieldwork in the photos.