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Naturalea is specialized in landscape restoration, and it is a cutting-edge nationwide company in the field of implementation of soil and water bioengineering techniques, both traditional naturalistic engineering and biophysical or structural vegetable engineering, with over 25 year’s experience in the sector and having more than 1.000 developed projects.

Naturalea’s field of work is very wide and we operate in many different areas such as river restoration, creation of wetlands, construction of natural treatment systems, re-vegetation of ponds and lakes, slope stabilization and treatment, environmental restoration of degradable areas, trail and road restoration, etc. The reason of our experience is working from a professional field in achieving good ecological status of the environment, considering it as all the not urbanized areas.

Research interests and main objectives

• Implementation of NBS (Nature-Based Solutions) for the mitigation impact of effluent pollutants
• Improve the functioning and management of highly altered river systems
   

Principal investigator

Albert Sorolla – Managing director

Staff involved in Pharm-ERA

Salut Ribera: Financial director
Adrian Löchner: Project manager
Melania Pijuan: Administrative           

Equipment and processes

The UrbanRiverLab (URL) is an outdoor experimental laboratory engaged to the investigation of the biogeochemical processes taking place in highly modified rivers. The main goal of this infrastructure is to better understand these processes and their role at the river ecosystem and thus, to develop innovative strategies and techniques for the management of such environments.

The facilities at URL consist of 12 channels of 12m length each, with cross section interior dimensions of 0.6 m x 0.46 m and 3 channels of 36m length. Additionally, it includes 12 constructed wetlands into 4 steel tanks of 3 compartments each. The circulating water is obtained from the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant and returned to the same point of capture.  The system has got a water pump that can give equal flow to all channels and a tank to introduce tracers, especial water…to the system.