Description

Division Head : Prof. Riccardo Valentini

The activities of the division Impacts on Agriculture, Forest and Natural Ecosystems (IAFENT) focus on the diagnosis and forecast of the impacts of climatic changes on agriculture and on natural and half-natural earthly ecosystem with a mediterranean climate. Particular attention has the model-making component relative to the carbon cycle and its feedbacks with the climatic system, and the component relative to the processes of desertification and to the vulnerability of the vegetation towards the forest fire.

The activity of research of the Division on "Impacts on Agriculture, Forest and Natural Ecosystems" is divided into three macroactivities  :

	Impacts on land use, agriculture and natural ecosystems The first macroactivity of the IAFENT division aims to the creation of operative tools to evaluate the impact of the variation and of climatic changes on the cultivations, on the agricultural areas and on natural ecosystems, with a particular reference to the typologies that are present in the Mediterranean...
	Climate change, carbon cycle and desertification The second macroactivity aims to evaluate the impacts of climatic changes on the biosphere, with a particular reference to the carbon cycle and to the retroactions with the climatic system on the forests and on the natural ecosystems, by analysing the data that comes from experiments of climatic manipulation and from the processes of desertification in the Mediterranean area...
	Impacts on crop water requirements and water resources management in agriculture The third macroactivity of the IAFENT division aims to estimate the impacts of climatic changes on the water demands of the main mediterranean agricultural cultivations and it also aims to analyse this impact on the management of the water resources in agriculture in order to give the guidelines on the possible strategies for a sustainable management of the resources in the future...

Objectives :

The evaluation and the diagnostics of the impacts of the variations and climatic changes in agriculture and in the natural and half-natural earthly ecosystems. The main operative results are represented by the production of scenarios of climatic risk for the agricultural and natural ecosystems and by the definition of codes of models and maps of dynamic danger of climatic variations, of fire and desertification on the agricultural and forest areas.

Ongoing projects :

The  IAFENT division collaborates with some projects. The ongoing projects are the following :

• BRIDGE - Sustainable Urban Planning Decision Support Accounting for Urban MetabolismEuropean Commission, FP7, Environment, 2008-2011.
• ITALIA - ISRAELE Cooperation Italy-Israel on Environment, Research and Development, MATTM, 2008-2010