Project: Roots for remediation - collaborative phytoremediation in post-catastrophe environments

Facts about the project

Project manager
Ulyana Muñoz Acuña, William Hogland
Other project members
Valery Mykhaylenko, Inna Pitak, Anastasia Sholokhova, Piotr Rybarczyk, Mait Kriipsalu
Participating organizations
Lithuanian Energy Institute (LEI), Lithuania. Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia. Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. Linnaeus University, Sweden.
Financier
The Swedish Institute (SI)
Timetable
1st August 2024 - 31 July 2025
Subject
Environmental Engineering (Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
Research group
The Environmental Science and Engineering Group (ESEG)

More about the project

The current collaboration originated in the need for new efforts regarding recovering land after catastrophic events in the Baltic Sea region. The partners aim to support the necessary assessment of contaminated areas and to address the new environmental challenges in the region. The partnership will work on a joint effort into developing strategies to mitigate future post-catastrophic events in the Baltic region through the development of new bioremediation techniques. These will be adapted to solve immediate environmental problems appearing in contaminated catastrophic areas. This knowledge will be transferred to the rest of the Baltic region on how to systematically achieve large-scale environmental restoration. The partnership includes the following countries: Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. On-going programs for removing anthropogenic pollution have been developed at the partner institutions and will now be further adapted to new post-catastrophe environmental problems.

The project is part of the research in the research group The Environmental Science and Engineering Group (ESEG)

Sort description of the ROOTS project

Guidelines were developed within the international project Roots for Remediation: Collaborative Phytoremediation in Post-Catastrophe Environments (ROOTS), financed by the Swedish Institute. This project addresses the growing environmental challenges in the Baltic Sea and Central European regions, particularly those resulting from natural disasters, industrial accidents, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Severe soil and water contamination in frontline areas in Ukraine such as Kharkiv creates long-term risks for ecosystems, food security, and public health. In response, the Guidelines provides methodological approaches conducting fieldwork, performing sampling and data analysis, and supporting informed decision‑making. Moreover, it presents phytoremediation as an environmentally friendly, cost‑effective, and scalable technology for restoring polluted landscapes. Visual tools and flowcharts assist users in applying the procedures step by step and adapting them to local conditions and to select suitable plant species. The work emphasizes the importance of regional cooperation, capacity building, and technology transfer as essential components of sustainable landscape recovery. Integrating expertise from all participating institutions, the Guidelines contribute to Sweden’s regional cooperation goals for 2021–2027 and support the EU green strategy, and resilient development in Ukraine and the broader Baltic region. The Guidelines will be used as teaching material in the International Carpathian School, organized by the National Ecological Center of Ukraine (NECU).

Digital Methodology Portfolio for Phytoremediation.docx _2026_02_10.pdf