Impacts on Agriculture, Forests and Ecosystem Services

The IAFES Division conducts research in the context of the interaction between climate and terrestrial ecosystems, taking into account new development pathways in the post-pandemic world, the new EU policies (e.g. CAP, Climate Law), strategies (Green Deal, Digital) and initiatives (Copernicus, Destination Earth), as well as the new Horizon Europe Programme (including its Missions) and the projects under the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (PNRR).

The Division’s research activities pay attention to keep data and software strategy aligned to the one of CMCC (e.g. in terms of programming languages, data interoperability and FAIR principles) and to support decision making processes on land-based climate change adaptation and mitigation options at local, national and international level, by: (i) improving public awareness on climate change and communicating related risks and vulnerabilities; (ii) co-designing with users innovative solutions and mechanisms for a systemic transformation of the territory; and (iii) guiding the formulation of climate-related strategies and plans, fostering transitions toward greater resource efficiency and contributing to SDGs.

Research Units

Research Unit Leaders: Maria Vincenza Chiriacò and Valentina Mereu 

This research line is dedicated to the design, development and testing of modeling approaches, with different complexity, to reproduce feedback between climate and terrestrial ecosystems – the latter considered as a mosaic of natural environments and human-managed systems, including inland freshwater bodies – and among their connected components (soil, water, vegetation), related functions and services. The adopted approaches include: climate-based indicators or indices, empirical functions, process-based models or “hybrid” methods, and statistical tools up to machine learning (ML) algorithms.

Research Unit Leaders: Marta Debolini and Roberta Padulano

This research line focuses on designing, developing and implementing frameworks and tools that integrate multiple feedbacks across numerous environmental and socio-economic dimensions, especially concerning the multi-sectoral competition for water resources and land systems. The research is applied at various scales (e.g., farm to watershed, landscape to region), considering climate change and other global drivers, land use dynamics in particular, in order to assist and implement new adaptation pathways  and new forms of ecosystem conservation, land governance, and water management across sectors, and the broad concept of water security.

Research Unit Leaders: Serena Marras and Dario Papale

This research line aims at measuring carbon and water cycles as well as ecosystems responses to climate change and other stresses. Synergistic monitoring platforms and networks (in-situ to remote) will provide detailed data on which applying innovative data integration and post-processing chains to assess interconnected ecosystems dynamics, identify plant functional and structural traits, quantify biodiversity aspects and then infer interactions with abiotic (e.g., climate, fires) and biotic (e.g., pests, diseases) factors.

Research Unit Leaders: Monia Santini and Antonio Trabucco

This research line gathers elements of all the previous research lines (producing, among other, data, indicators, models, new workflows for data integration and post-processing) to contribute to some key aspects of the Copernicus and DestinE initiative, taking also opportunities from Earth Observation, up to develop advanced modules to reproduce, and then predict/project, the behavior of ecosystem components under climate change, extreme events (e.g. droughts) and disturbances (e.g. fires), as well as under alternative management options.

IAFES Projects

  • PASS: Piano locale di adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici e misure di sensibilizzazione e formazione

    The implementation of the agreement foreseen the development of two activities, distinct…


  • ARCADIA: TrAnsformative climate ResilienCe by nAture-baseD solutions in the continental bio-geographical region

    ARCADIA is a project funded by HORIZON Europe Innovation Actions in response…


  • IAFES Publications

    Carbon sequestration in a bamboo plantation: a case study in a Mediterranean area

    Chiti T., Blasi E.; Chiriacò M. V.
    2024, Journal of Forestry Research, Volume 35, Issue 1 - Article number 51, doi: 10.1007/s11676-024-01696-9


    The misconception of soil organic carbon sequestration notion: When do we achieve climate benefit?

    Petersson T.; Antoniella G.; Chiriacò M. V. , Perugini L., Chiti T.
    2024, Soil Use and Management, Volume 40, Issue 1 - Article number e13009, doi: 10.1111/sum.13009

    Latest on Water, Food, and Land Use

    Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks

    Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, and climate risks are threatening its energy and food security, ecosystems, infrastructure, water resources, financial stability, and people’s health. According to the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) assessment, coordinated with CMCC and published today, many of these risks have already reached critical levels and could become catastrophic without urgent and decisive action.

    Irrecoverable carbon in the mountains: embracing the opportunity of agroforestry

    A new study coordinated by the CMCC Foundation highlights and quantifies the effectiveness of agroforestry practices in mountain agricultural systems to mitigate the effects of climate change while improving agricultural resilience and protecting biodiversity.

    VITERBO

    Division Manager

    Alessandra Settimi

    Via Igino Garbini 51
    01100 Viterbo, Italy

    +39 0761 309587

    SASSARI

    Co-Division Manager

    Matteo Funaro

    Via De Nicola, 9
    07100 Sassari, Italy

    +39 079 229377

    IAFES Models

  • IDI - Integrated Desertification Index

    The Integrated Desertification Index (IDI) was developed (Santini et al., 2010) to…


  • LUC@CMCC - Land use change model

    The land use change model LUC@CMCC was reformulated in Santini and Valentini…


  • Coexistence Model

    The coexistence model (Di Paola et al., 2012) is a simple quantitative…


  • SWAT

    SWAT is a hydrologic model, developed by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS)…


  • 3D-CMCC FEM

    3D-CMCC-FEM – Three Dimension Forest Ecosystem Model (Collalti et al., 2014; Collalti…

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