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Filtering by: Impacts on Agriculture, Forests and Ecosystem Services Division

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 to the call “Testing and demonstrating transformative solutions on climate resilience, mainstreaming nature based solutions in the systemic transformation”. The main goal of ARCADIA project is to mobilise 8 European regions and communities – from Italy, Croatia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia – to accelerate nature-based solutions (NBS) adoption and assist them in accessing up-to-date, evidence-based actionable knowledge, guidance, knowledge-intense tools and services, mutual learning and networking opportunities.  

AVENGERS: ATTRIBUTING AND VERIFYING EUROPEAN AND NATIONAL GREENHOUSE GAS AND AEROSOL EMISSIONS AND RECONCILIATION WITH STATISTICAL BOTTOM UP ESTIMATES

The Attributing and Verifying European and National Greenhouse gas and aerosol Emissions and Reconciliation with Statistical bottomup estimates – AVENGERS consortium unites a diverse group of experts “to establish how top-down techniques can support the verification of national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and other regulated estimates of emissions and removals, in order to improve or supplement the methods/approaches currently used”.

BIOservicES: LINKING SOIL BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS AND SERVICES IN DIFFERENT LAND USES: FROM THE IDENTIFICATION OF DRIVERS, PRESSURES AND CLIMATE CHANGE RESILIENCE TO THEIR ECONOMIC VALUATION

The main objective of BIOservicES is to understand the interconnection between soil organisms and the delivery of multiple soil ecosystem functions and services at different scales (field vs landscape), identifying the pressures and drivers resulting from different land uses and climate change, and performing an economic valuation of the contribution of soil organisms to ecosystem services.

CERISE: CopERnIcus climate change Service Evolution

The Copernicus Climate Change Service Evolution (CERISE) project aims to enhance the quality of the C3S reanalysis and seasonal forecast portfolio, with a focus on land-atmosphere coupling. It will support the evolution of C3S by improving the C3S climate reanalysis and seasonal prediction systems and products towards enhanced integrity and coherence of the C3S Earth system Essential Climate Variables. 

CLIMAAX – CLIMAte risk and vulnerability Assessment framework and toolboX

CLIMAAX responds to the call HORIZON-MISS-2021-CLIMA-02-01 by providing financial, analytical and practical support to European regions, allowing an improvement of regional climate and emergency risk management plans. It is designed to significantly contribute to the harmonization and consolidation of the practice of climate risk assessment, leaving a substantial legacy for upcoming European initiatives.

CONCERTO: Improved CarbOn cycle represeNtation through multi-sCale models and Earth obseRvation for Terrestrial ecOsystems

Terrestrial ecosystems are key to the functioning of the global carbon cycle and play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change. According to the Global Carbon Budget, about 30% of all the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted in the atmosphere is removed by vegetation uptake through photosynthesis and accumulation of biomass (so called CO2 sinks on land). Land use change, nutrient limitations, and extreme events (e.g. droughts, fires and heat waves) may limit this potential to sequester carbon. Identifying processes that might destabilise net land carbon uptake is of paramount importance for understanding and managing the global carbon cycle. CONCERTO aims to improve: the current understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle by adding land processes that are not included yet or not fully developed in Land Surface Models (LSMs); the representation of land change, land use and land management maps to improve the accuracy of carbon fluxes and stocks; the description of impacts on the carbon cycle of extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves and fires, using tools such as state-of-the-art land surface models (LSMs) embedded into Earth system models (EMSs); the integration of LSM improvements in offline global simulations (driven by re-analyses) and in coupled ESMs.

DesirMED: Demonstration and mainstrEaming of nature-based Solutions for climate Resilient transformation in the MEDiterranean

DesirMED is a project funded by HORIZON Europe Research and Innovation actions in support of the implementation of the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission (HORIZON-MISS-2022-CLIMA-01). DesirMED aims at increasing ambition, ownership and capability of regional Mediterranean leaders and communities through proven transformative climate change adaptation approaches prioritizing nature based solutions. To this aim DesirMED involves a multi-level set of actors in 5 Demonstrating regions and 3 Replicating Regions working hand-in-hand with scientific partners to foster holistic approaches to implement transformative adaptation. By engaging at the regional level key institutions in a multi-level governance framework, it will act as a catalyzer to trigger and accelerate the necessary actions to increase regional climate resilience over the long run.

DRYAD: Demonstration and modelling of nbs to enhance the resilience of mediterranean agro-silvopastoral ecosystems and landscapes

Mediterranean agrosilvopastoral ecosystems (MAEs), such as Dehesa in Spain, Montado in Portugal, Meriagos in Italy, &; Valonian oak forests in Greece, provide essential environmental services and influence significantly local communities and their economies. MAEs are expected to be severely affected by climate impacts and extreme conditions such as droughts, high tree mortality and wildfires. Addressing these challenges, requires supporting local communities and authorities with local solutions and transformations towards climate-resilience. The proposal will be centered around development, testing and demonstrating NBSs in 5 demonstration regions including Andalusia and Extremadura (ES), Alentejo (PT), Sardinia (IT) and Aetoloakarnania (EL) (5 in Cohesion Fund Regions). The most promising NBSs will be transferred to these 3 replicating regions: Castilla-y-León (ES), Occitanie (FR) and Tuscany (IT). Furthermore, DRYAD will support a multi-level and cross- sectoral integrated and adaptive management governance via development of Decision Support Systems.

FIRELOGUE – Cross-sector Wildfire Risk Management Dialogue

Wildfire risk management (WFRM) is characterised by complex interdependencies between vegetation conditions, climate, human behavior and socioeconomic development and inequalities. In addition, different institutions and organisations involved on WFRM may have diverging interests, needs, policies and practices, with responsibilities not always aligned with the necessary resources. Thus, WFRM can be subject to conflicts between different ends in which different stakeholders with different interests and goals clash. FIRELOGUE coordinates and supports the Innovation Actions funded under H2020 calls by integrating their findings across stakeholder and fire management phases to deconstruct conflicting interests and real or perceived injustices, providing a space for deliberating in a just and inclusive way, to co-develop integrated strategies to overcome these conflicts.

FOODCLIC – Integrated urban FOOD policies. Developing sustainability Co-benefits, spatial Linkages, social Inclusion and sectoral Connections to transform food systems in city-regions

Europe’s urban areas face significant challenges to ensure the availability and consumption of healthy, affordable, safe and sustainably produced food. Such challenges converge within local food environments but are often neglected by public planners. Promising initiatives taken by municipalities to change the architecture of food choice often fail to become embedded in the wider policy context and to reach deprived and vulnerable groups. Key factors responsible for this are: (1) siloed ways of working and (2) fragmentation of knowledge on facilitators and barriers related to food system transformation. These factors hinder the development and implementation of integrated urban food policies. FOODCLIC aims to contribute to urban food environments that make healthy and sustainable food available, affordable and attractive to all citizens (including deprived and vulnerable groups).

Germ of Life: Digital Drought Risk Management enabling the drought mitigation and adaptation strategies for the restoration of the ecosystem equilibrium in Mediterranean European Countries

The Germ of Life project aims at developing, test and uptake a drought risk management preventive approach based on a set of jointly developed and adapted solutions based on: (i) newly available data, (ii) drought risk prediction for the territorial monitoring systems and timely warning of drought conditions, (iii) a vulnerability assessment tool enhancing the coordination and cooperation of stakeholders, and (iv) an innovation procurement platform for innovative NBS and technological solutions supporting risk-adaptation strategies.

HURRAY: HazelnUt Research on Resilient Areas for future Yields

In recent years, cooperation between enterprises and the scientific community has opened exploration of new climate services to understand emerging opportunities to enhance/stabilize agricultural production and reduce risks due to climate hazards. The information released by applied research on climate change can create benefits and opportunities, giving a wider vision of the future and facilitating strategic planning activities for different economic sectors, such as agribusiness. This information may relate to the  characterization and evolution of weather-climatic conditions and the use of agro-climate models.

InBestSoil: Monetary valuation of soil ecosystem services and creation of initiatives to invest in soil health: setting a framework for the inclusion of soil health in business and in the policy making process

InBestSoil is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme involving twenty partners from ten countries, with very different profiles (universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, consultancies, farmers, and NOGs, among others). The project will provide data, evidence, tools and models to assess how investment in soil health can contribute to the transition to a long-term resilient and sustainable use of soil, using 6 lighthouses and 3 living labs, which provides a total of 9 study areas across 4 biogeographic regions from Europe (Boreal, Continental, Atlantic, Mediterranean), and different land uses (agriculture, forest, urban, mining), as models for co-creation and co-design (multi-actor approach, responsible research and innovation and open science).

IRIDE Lot 1

The IRIDE program is an innovative project undertaken by the Italian government in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) to leverage resources from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Phase 2 of IRIDE Lot 1 started in October 2024 following the successful implementation of the IRIDE Precursor Phase. The main purpose of the project is to deliver an operational portfolio of geospatial services and develop digital tools for End and Pilot users within the Thematic Services S1-Coastal and Marine Monitoring, S2- Air Quality, S5- Hydro-Meteorological-Climate, S6- WaterManagement. The operational services allow mapping, monitoring and forecasting of various characteristics of coastal areas (including geomorphological, land use, flooding, habitats etc.) as well as operational model validation, operational air quality monitoring and forecast, pollutant emissions monitoring and assessment, re-analysis of air quality at national scale, hydro-meterological mapping and monitoring atmospheric structure, greenhouse gases and others essential climate variables monitoring, lightening monitoring, flood forecasting and sediment management, etc.

NEVERMORE: New Enabling Visions and tools for End-useRs and stakeholders thanks to a common MOdeling appRoach towards a climatE neutral and resilient society

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Climate Change 2021 is a “code red for humanity” according to the UN Secretary-General. It is thus essential to work on a climate resilient society. This entails both climate neutrality and mitigation of those impacts of climate change that are making themselves felt already. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of improved translations of scientific insights into policy and social practice.

NODES – Nord-Ovest Digitale E Sostenibile

NODES is an Innovation Ecosystem structured in a way such as to guarantee interdisciplinarity among its diverse themes and cross-fertilization of digital-driven technology and innovation.

NUBICOS: New Users for a Better ICOS

The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is a fully operational European Landmark research infrastructure providing standardised high-precision observations on greenhouse gases and their fluxes. The ICOS infrastructure is currently covering 16 countries with 170 stations. In this project, we will work with new users for ICOS data from satellite and modeling communities and prepare products for policymakers. We are improving sustainability of ICOS by streamlining the data pipelines and strengthening the community engagement including new members. In addition to data, ICOS is producing protocols and processes, which are now needed for the global greenhouse gases (GHG) initiative coordinated by World Meteorological Organization (WMO), thus strengthening the European leadership in it. NUBICOS will focus on four specific objectives: 1. The cooperation between ICOS and the remote sensing community will be deepened. 2. The value chain from observations to climate services will be improved. 3. The internal engagement of ICOS and the identity of the ICOS community will be strengthened. 4. The global cooperation of ICOS, particularly in the WMO framework, will be intensified.

OEMC: Open-Earth-Monitor Cyberinfrastructure

The EU-funded OEMC project will provide the open-Earth-monitor cyberinfrastructure to accelerate Europe’s capability to process high-quality, user-friendly, environmental information, based on Earth observation (EO) data. The developed cyber-infrastructure will be secured in FAIR data principles and existing platforms related to EO will be leveraged to a higher level. This will allow the monitoring of essential biodiversity indicators and the registering of natural capital accounts for private and public sectors, allowing businesses to improve their competitive advantage through the EU Green Deal and European citizens to have a better quality of life.

PAUL – Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes – towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases

PAUL project supports the European Green Deal by creating capabilities to observe and verify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from densely populated urban areas across Europe. Cities are recognized as important anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission hotspots and therefore play a significant role in any emission reduction efforts. The PAUL project aims to increase our understanding of specific needs of GHG emission assessment in urban environment; it compares available and novel observational approaches and implements an integrated concept for a city observatory, providing unique data sets that feed diverse modelling approaches, scientific studies and will be the base of services towards the city administrations.

RethinkAction – CRoss-sEcToral planning enHanced by a decisIoN-maKing platform to foster climate Action

RethinkAction focuses on supporting the objectives of the EU Green Deal translating its action plan in relevant and practical actions and solutions related to land use, as opportunities able not only to support climate neutrality and adaptation, sustainable use of the land resources, and biodiversity restoration, but also actions for social improvement, fostering equality and just transition for all designing the road map to green recovery after COVID.

SDGs-EYES – Sustainable Development Goals – Enhanced monitoring through the family of copErnicus Services

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a data driven agenda, and the use of Earth Observation (EO) can make the SDG indicators’ monitoring and reporting technically and financially viable, and comparable across countries.  SDGs-EYES aims to boost the European capacity for monitoring the SDGs based on Copernicus, building a portfolio of decision-making tools to monitor those SDG indicators related to the environment from an inter-sectoral perspective, aligning with the EU Green Deal priorities and challenges. SDGs-EYES will establish an integrated scientific, technological and user engagement framework overcoming the knowledge and technical barriers that prevent the exploitation, combination and cross-feeding of data and tools from the Copernicus’s six core Services, its space-based and in-situ components, and other platforms and portals.  SDGs-EYES considers three interconnected SDGs, on climate (SDG13), ocean (SDG14) and land (SDG15), to demonstrate through four Pilots the Copernicus potential for monitoring six indicators making part of the EU and national assessments: GHG emissions, temperature deviation, ocean acidification, marine eutrophication, forest cover change and soil erosion. Although focusing on the biosphere, these indicators are linked to other SDGs on socio-economic and (geo)political factors (e.g., human health, resources security, poverty, conflicts, displacements). Thus, an additional cross-goals indicator and Pilot will focus on vulnerable communities under cumulative climate extreme hazards.  SDGs-EYES seeks to combine the science-informed (top-down) approach with a stakeholder-driven (bottom-up) approach to transfer scientific outcomes into easy-to-understand and easy-to-use actionable information in the context of SDG indicators’ assessment. Decision-making tools delivered by Pilots will be co-designed with users,

SWITCH – Switching European food systems for a just, healthy and sustainable dietary transition through knowledge and innovation

The transition towards sustainable, safe, healthy and inclusive food systems, from farm to fork, has become a key priority for EU policies, in line with the UN goals sustainable development goals (SDGs). The biggest challenge at present is represented by the limited knowledge of influence dietary choices that limits large scale adoption of healthy and sustainable diets. The ambition of the SWITCH project is to accelerate the behavioral shift of European citizens towards more sustainable and healthy patterns, using Research and Innovation (R&I) as a driver to increase knowledge, accessibility and facilitation strategies at all level of the food systems, involving a multi-actor systemic approach and a co-creation strategy to delineate solutions fair to consumers that support virtuous behavior throughout the whole food chain. For a successful large scale adoption of healthy dietary behavior, all the actors of the food systems need to be engaged, connected and valorized.

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