Healthy soils are essential for the production of 95% of the food we eat.
That’s why researchers of different nationalities are on a mission to protect the soil for future generations. Find out how they are helping to combat climate change.
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.
LANDSUPPORT, represented by Fabio Terribile, at the University of Naples is on the list of finalists in the “Science and Innovation Management” category of the German Falling Walls Award. Fingers crossed that LANDSUPPORT is being recognised as addressing one of the biggest challenges of our time: 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.
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
LANDSUPPORT has officially been selected by the European Commission as a “success story”.
Success stories are finalised projects that have distinguished themselves by their impact, contribution to policy-making, innovative results and/or creative approach and can be a source of inspiration for others. The choice of a panel of experts to select a project as a success story is made on the basis of a selection process according to rigorous criteria regarding the quality, relevance and results of a project.
The LANDSUPPORT consortium is very pleased with this recognition of the hard work over the past years and of the high quality of the results achieved.
With it’s high impact, the LANDSUPPORT platform will remain operational long after the project itself is completed. As the Coordinator Fabio Terribile mentioned “If we are to save our soils and our land, then we need to leave these tools as open as possible, and to engage with a large community of users. On this point, it was really gratifying to see such interest in the platform from stakeholders. These included public administrators and wine cooperatives. Some members of the Italian Parliament, who after seeing and using the platform, even mentioned it in a soil framework law proposal. The platform will be kept alive for many years ahead.”
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 international summer school on “Statistical analysis of spatial Data in Agro-Environmental research” (SDAE, 2nd edition) will provide examples of the mostly used statistical analysis of agro-environmental data at various scales, from plot over catchment to regional scales.
Topics: Statistical analysis, advanced literature search and meta-analysis, data modelling (e.g., spatial mixed models, random forest, boosted regression trees), methods for covariate acquisition and selection, use of reference databases on land cover (CORINE land cover), soil (LUCAS and ESDAC-JRC products), as well as weather and climate data (MARS, WorldClim).
After the SDAE summer school, participants will be able to deal with spatial data (e.g., visualization, spatial references and projections, terrain analysis, modelling), and to use advanced literature analysis tools.
The school has received the support of the Italian Society of Agronomy (SIA) and the patronage of the Italian Association of Geomorphology and Physical Geography (AIGEO).
The school, it is organized into theoretical lessons in the morning and hands-on sessions in the afternoon with applications and case studies of agronomy, spatial data management, and terrain analysis. The course is dedicated to PhD students, young researchers, master students, professionals specialized in territorial analysis with numerical-statistical background.
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!
On March 14th, LANDSUPPORT researcher Angelo Basile was in the Dubai expo to discuss about technologies for agriculture, based on experiences gathered within LANDSUPPORT, in the context of the Forum on “LAND – CITY – SEA – SCAPE INTELLIGENCE – MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND SYSTEMIC APPROACHES FOR THE RATIONAL USE OF RESOURCE AND SUSTAINABILITY” hosted by the Italy Pavillon.
The event aimed at presenting projects and exchanging knowledge between scholars and researchers from the Italian National Research Council and researchers from the United Arab Emirates.
The audience consisted of young researchers, Italian scholars and researchers from the Emirates, investors and companies, stakeholders and institutional representatives.
The video on the LANDSUPPORT project, shown by Angelo Basile, raised participants’ interest, which asked whether such complex system could be used by non-expert operators and distributed in a quick and easy way. “LANDSUPPORT tools are aimed at filling the gaps between data availability and their use”, Basile replied. “Our S-DSS system is a completely free infrastructure whose complexity is hidden to the end-user” he continued, this highlighting one of the key strength of the LANDSUPPORT platform. He then showed a practical example on how a farmer can compare different crop combinations in terms of yield, N-leached and SOC change alternative practices, as tillage, irrigation and crop change.
The streaming of the event were broadcasted on the Commissariat’s Youtube and Facebook channels:
Il 2 marzo 2022 si è tenuto un webinar sugli strumenti offerti dalla piattaforma di Landuspport, rivolto al personale tecnico delle Agenzie Regionali per la Protezione dell’Ambiente che insieme ad Ispra costituiscono il Sistema Nazionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente (SNPA).
L’incontro, seguito da circa 50 persone, è stata l’occasione per discutere di tematiche affrontate quotidianamente dai colleghi delle Agenzie regionali: dopo una presentazione generale del progetto (Fabio Terribile), si è parlato di consumo di suolo (Giuliano Langella), servizi ecosistemci, impatto dei pesticidi nell’ambiente agricolo (Angelo Basile) e di degrado dei suoli (Piero Manna) così come definito dall’indicatore 15.3.1 degli SDGs.
