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The LANDSUPPORT project developed a suite of smart, web-based decision support tools for land use policies and agriculture management. It ended in 2022, but the user-friendly platform is enabling a broad range of stakeholders to make sound environmental decisions and supporting better spatial planning.

The EU-funded LANDSUPPORT project’s geospatial decision support system and its 100 plus operational tools are supporting policymakers, farmers, spatial planners and land managers in addressing three main challenges. These are the complexity of land systems, the lack of a truly integrated approach to many agricultural and environmental issues, and the lack of support to farmers and regional and national governments in making informed choices about more sustainable land planning and land management.

As 2023 comes to a close, four new tools (soil health, update to land degradation neutrality tool, eco-tourism, biodiversity) are under development and will be published in 2024. “They respond to the growing needs and challenges on land and soil health,” states project coordinator Fabio Terribile, professor of pedology at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. The platform is being implemented based on the requests of certain stakeholders so that the tools’ outcomes are better adapted to their needs. In particular, the European Land and Soil Alliance and the city of Naples either intend to use or are already using the tools related to spatial planning (land take and green infrastructure).

The Natural Park of Cilento has already used LANDSUPPORT tools as a basis for the revision of their plan. FAI, which is the largest Italian association dealing with natural ans cultural heritage, is planning to bring some LANDSUPPORT tools (ecotourism, biodiversity) in their activities with Italian schools. To meet the above needs, the results of this family of tools are being translated into German and Italian. In summer 2022, LANDSUPPORT was invited to the Italian Senate to present the platform’s functionalities.

Following this occasion, the project was explicitly included as a benchmark in the proposal for a new soil framework law for Italy. The platform is being further leveraged through the participation and active contribution in several ongoing EU-funded projects. Lastly, a cooperation with the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland has begun in order to extend some of the LANDSUPPORT platform’s functions to the Icelandic territory as part of GróLind, a large-scale national project to monitor soil and vegetation resources via remote sensing data.

“EU funding for LANDSUPPORT was absolutely key in starting this project and supporting the development of the platform to a stage where it, in turn, is already creating a very large impact,” concludes Prof. Terribile. “The platform counts more than 1 000 active users from a wide variety of entities across Europe, thus justifying the existence and need for a unique integrated platform like ours.”

Article from CORDIS EU research results website 

LANDSUPPORT, represented by Fabio Terribile, at the University of Naples is one of the 10 winners in the “Science and Innovation Management” category of the German Falling Walls Award. LANDSUPPORT is recognised as addressing one of the biggest challenges of our time: supporting good decisions for the protection of our soil and land.

On Tuesday 19 July 2022, from 9.30 am, on the initiative of some senators, the conference “A framework law for Italian soil in the context of the European strategy for soil” will be held in the Chapter Hall at the Cloister of the Convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva to present the law proposal (AS 2614) “A SOIL FRAMEWORK LAW FOR ITALIAN SOILS IN VIEW OF THE EUROPEAN SOIL STRATEGY” produced with the contribution of the Italian agricultural scientific associations. This law proposal makes explicit reference to our LANDSUPPORT platform.

The conference will be an opportunity to discuss the serious threats affecting soils but above all also the operational solutions for sustainable soil management. It will involve politicians, institutions and researchers with the aim of launching shared initiatives to protect and well manage this natural resource, both precious and fragile.

Programme of the event

The conference proceedings will be streamed live at https://webtv.senato.it
and on the YouTube channel of the Italian Senate https://www.youtube.com/user/SenatoItaliano.

Access to the room – with appropriate clothing and, for men, a jacket and tie – is allowed until the maximum capacity is reached.
The press must be accredited by writing to: verabenci1979@gmail.com
Accreditation requests must necessarily contain: personal data (name, place and date of birth); telephone number; the details of the membership card of the Order of Journalists, or the details of the identity document for the other information operators; the indication of the reference head.
Organizational secretariat: virginia.lamura@senato.it

Online registration is mandatory by 10 July at 8pm at the link:
https://forms.gle/PTDTGat6jhnBypng7

After a long period in which COVID has prevented us from getting together in person, LANDSUPPORT has held its final conference face-to-face in the beautiful Royal Palace of the University of Naples Federico II in Portici, Italy, on 26 April 2022 and the Save Our Soils Workshop on 27 – 28 April 2022.

These final events consisted of a 1-day internal project meeting, followed by a 2-day event – the Save Our Soils workshop – which welcomed a variety of stakeholders and high-level experts in the field of agriculture, land take and land degradation, urban planning and biodiversity, just to name a few. The objective was to present the results of the project, encourage participants to explore and disseminate the results of the project and facilitate discussions on how to better approach soil health at the interface of science-policy and cluster with other EU projects to achieve this goal. The event touched upon three many areas: i) agriculture, ii) land take and land degradation, and iii) biodiversity and ecotourism. It offered a balanced programme with presentations combined with open discussions and roundtables, demos and poster sessions, to find the best solutions to protect our essential resource: the soils. Discussions on the  final policy insights of LANDSUPPORT and its long-term sustainability were at the core of the event. The presentations and discussions will be summarized in a final report which will be released soon.

During this 3-day event, LANDSUPPORT was described a visionary project several times. It is the aim of LANDSUPPORT to take this vision further and ensure the suitability and further development of the platform to keep reaching its high societal and environmental impact and support Europe in making better decision for land and soil

The LANDSUPPORT Winter School was held online for two weeks, on February 14-25. The course objective was to develop a basic knowledge on the observation, analysis and modelling of the Earth Critical Zone (ECZ), and on how to use this knowledge base to develop WEBGIS or S-DSS applications. The Winter School was a success, as highlighted by participants’ feedbacks:

“This course was one of the best learning experiences I have had online in my early career. I would like to participate in it whenever possible in order to improve my skills in this area.”

“The school, I think, covered all the planned goals, the teachers are wonderful, and the organizations were excellent. I hope to enrol in a school like this in the future in broader programs to develop my own capabilities. The school is very useful to me as a student, especially in programming, remote sensing systems, modelling…etc. of the technology used in agriculture.”

“I appreciate the efforts of entire team & entire management for arranging such a lovely, interesting & valuable event where opportunity was offered to max. range of experts to learn and share knowledge across.”

“It really very nice to program and I feel good to participate in such valuable winter school. Thank you organizing committee for giving me this learning opportunity at your prestigious organization. Thank you again.”

The Winter School was attended by 135 participants from Italy, Belgium, Germany, France, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Canada, Ethiopia, South Africa, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Tunisia, Zambia, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Philipines. Nearly all of them declared that they would attend again if the course will be organized yearly, and their comments after the course were simply enthusiastic!