Babeș-Bolyai University (BBU), through the Faculty of Biology and Geology, is part of a European project HORIZON, ARAGORN (Achieving Remediation and Governing Restoration Of contaminated soils Now, GA 101112723). The consortium brings together a total of 17 partners – scientific and technical institutions from 12 European countries.
Healthy soils provide food, clean water, biodiversity, and climate resilience—but over 60% in the EU are degraded, with up to 2.8 million potentially contaminated sites. ARAGORN promotes holistic, risk-aware remediation that addresses both environmental and societal needs for successful land restoration.
ARAGORN aims to fill the gap in assessing the suitability and sustainability of remediation approaches for contaminated sites in Europe – with a holistic, multi-dimensional and resilience-based approach, it optimizes planning, and management of restored sites through nature-based restoration techniques, while building a practical framework for decision-making.
ARAGORN focuses on tackling hotspot pollution sources, aiming to mitigate risk and prevent further emissions, as remediation actions become more difficult and costly as pollution spreads.
ARAGORN provides a robust decision tree tailored to both private and public land managers, guiding them to the most effective, eco-resilient, and cost-efficient remediation and restoration scenarios.
More information about the project: https://aragorn-horizon.eu/the-project/
Tradition and Excellence with Culture-Science-Innovation since 1581
Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (UBB) is the university with the most complex academic profile in the country (by its number of programmes and multicultural profile featuring three official academic languages: Romanian, Hungarian, and German), and with the oldest academic tradition in Romania (established 444 years ago – 1581), accounting for the largest academic community in the country (with a staff of more than 55,000 people, from 15 cities and 12 counties). Since its foundation, UBB has counted among the top universities in Romania, and for the past seven years it has been ranked first in the country in the University Metaranking, which indexes all major international university rankings. For several years now, UBB has consistently ranked among the top 5% of the world’s universities (out of approximately 30,000), with an advanced academic infrastructure (e.g. RDI units integrated into European networks, up-to-date teaching laboratories integrating virtual/augmented/mixed reality through the UBB-EON-XR Centre, etc.). Recently (2021), following the international QS STAR audit, UBB was officially ranked as the first world-class university (QS*****) in Romania, and in 2020 UBB was included in the GUILD, the organisation of the most prestigious European world-class/research-intensive universities, it was awarded the European HR Award for Excellence, and as of 2021/2022 it is a member of the EUTOPIA alliance of European universities.
