From an ecological problem child to a refuge for unique flora and fauna: this is the transformation that has taken place in the Bleistätter Moor with extensive restoration measures.

The flooding and renaturation of the Bleistätter Moor was an important water and nature conservation project. It is the result of many years of cooperation between experts from the fields of water ecology, agriculture, nature conservation and tourism.

With an area of around 600 hectares, the Bleistätter Moor was once one of the largest moor areas in Carinthia. At the beginning of the 1930s, the construction of drainage systems was started. The resulting areas have been used intensively for agriculture by the Bleistätter Moor water cooperative for decades. As a result, fertilizers and pesticides were washed out into Lake Ossiach without any filtering effect, causing the water quality, especially in the eastern bay, to deteriorate more and more, including a sharp increase in algae growth. Many nutrients also entered the lake through the Tiebel estuary. The restoration and flooding of the westernmost part of the moor has already greatly improved the aquatic ecological quality of the lake. The Tiebel estuary and adjacent areas have been a nature reserve and landscape conservation area for decades.

In 2002, the area was nominated as a Natura 2000 site and was finally designated as the Tiebel estuary European nature reserve. In addition to the northern flood basin, the southern flood basin has now also been designated as a Natura 2000 site. The total costs for the “Bleistätter Moor restoration” project amount to €10.44 million. The province of Carinthia paid €4.37 million, the federal government €5.9 million, the Ossiacher See water board €150,000 and the municipality of Steindorf €30,000. The measures included the construction of a flood protection dam for Steindorf, the construction of a new pump house for the Bleistätter Moor water cooperative, the removal of areas for the flood basins, the clearing of the Tiebel and suction dredging as well as the construction of a boundary dam and the flood basins themselves.

As part of this research cooperation, drone-based monitoring of the dramatic change processes in the Bleistätter Moores has been carried out for 5 years since 2017. In this environmental monitoring project, Gernot Paulus, Karl-Heinrich Anders and Ulf Scherling are responsible for the planning, implementation and analysis of drone flights in the Bleistätter Moor. The basis for the flights is a standardized flight plan; an unmanned aerial platform equipped with a differential GPS (BRAMOR ppx) is used. The flights are carried out with different camera sensors (RGB, NIR, multispectral). For the quantification of change processes, control points were defined and geodetically surveyed for quality assurance of the flight results. At least one complete aerial survey is planned per year; the time frame for the aerial survey will be determined in consultation with the department 8 – Environment, water and nature conservation of the Carinthian government. The actual flights are then carried out in good weather conditions to ensure appropriate data quality.