Il progetto landsupport: un nuovo strumento per il sistema nazionale per la protezione dell’ambiente

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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.

Become a land supporter and ACT FOR LAND!

ACTFORLAND

In the European Union, 1908 m2 of fertile soil are lost for ever every second, degraded by a wide range of human activities such as poor land management, unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices, pollution, soil sealing, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Many policies are in place to protect European soils, but their implementation is often complex and frustrating also due to technical difficulties – and this is the reason why Member States are not currently on track to meet the European commitments related to soil and land protection.

Now, we have two good news. The first one, you probably now it by now: the LANDSUPPORT project is implementing an innovative, web-based, free-of-charge platform aimed at supporting decision making for agriculture, forestry, environmental sustainability and land management, and it includes two tools specifically dedicated to land take and land degradation.

The second good news is that every citizen can make the difference! The LANDSUPPORT project is promoting the ACT FOR LAND advocacy campaign: by subscribing to the campaign, you can call out for mayors and public authorities in Europe for taking urgent, unprecedented action for soil protection. You can ask public authorities to develop strategies for effective land conservation – also with the help of the LANDSUPPORT platform, and to join the movement “Communes for Land”, gathering local administrations committed to land protection which will receive free support and guidance for the use of LANDSUPPORT tools.

Joining our pledge is simple, all you need to do is visit www.actforland.eu and click on “Join us”.
We are looking forward to welcoming you among us land supporters
!

LANDSUPPORT final conference and “save our soils” workshop

Sad but true, the LANDSUPPORT project is getting closer to its end. To best celebrate these four intense years and take stock of results and lessons learnt, LANDSUPPORT is organizing its Final Conference on April 26-28.

The first day will be an internal event, and will give the consortium the opportunity to come together one more time within our project framework to share and discuss the results, insights and experience of our ambitious project as it comes to an end. It will be another milestone to finalize this project on a high endnote and lead into a new era of improvements in soil health and soil policy implementation.

On April 27 and 28, LANDSUPPORT will open up to researchers and stakeholders hosting theSAVE OUR SOILS” Workshop, where we will share and discuss with you our results towards a very ambitious goal: the development of decision support tools – as well as other projects’ and initiatives’ insights – for key agriculture and environmental policies implementation including SDGs, CAP, New Green Deal.

This workshop will be a unique opportunity to bring together current research on this topic and policy makers and it will include project contributions to: tools for policy implementation in agriculture, land degradation and land take, and ecotourism and biodiversity. This will include the findings from the Horizon2020 LANDSUPPORT project as well as other International, European and national projects (e.g. Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, EJP-soil, LIFE+). It will be enriched by speakers’ insights on these topics and roundtables to discuss common challenges and possible solutions towards SDG policy implementation.

Where will the Workshop take place?

At the University of Naples Federico II in Portici, near Naples, Italy

How to apply?

If you wish to participate, please fill in the registration form by Friday, 24 February 2022, to secure your participation.

In case of any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to reach out to the project management team at Modis via: management@landsupport.eu

The LANDSUPPORT team is looking forward to welcoming you in Portici!

More information

Agenda and instructions
Register for the event

The LANDSUPPORT Winter School on Sustainable land management and Earth Critical Zone (ECZ) – Registrations are open!

The Earth’s Critical Zone (ECZ) is the near-surface environment at the interface between rock, soil, water, air and living organisms, and it regulates the natural habitat as well as the availability of life-sustaining resources. Understanding ECZ, and the interactions occurring within ECZ, is crucial for addressing today’s environmental and agricultural challenges – and this requires the integration of various scientific domains.

However, ECZ is seldom tackled in high-level trainings – and this is where LANDSUPPORT comes into play, offering an inter-disciplinary training opportunity to PhD students and young scientists – and in general, researchers that are interested in the topic will be welcome

The LANDSUPPORT Winter School will be held in Portici (Naples – Italy) on 14-18 February.

The 5-days training will guide students in developing a basic knowledge about (i) understanding and processing ECZ data as acquired by field observation, lab analysis and remote sensing techniques, Raster and vec­tor data, Datacube, (ii) understanding and processing ECZ modelling such as water flows and pollut­ants transport in the vadose zone-soil-plant-atmosphere system, crop growth, land take, etc. and (iii) the use of the outcoming resulting data to be employed for developing WEBGIS or S-DSS applications.

How to apply?

To ensure the best learning experience participation is limited to 30 participants. If you wish to participate, please register by 7 January 2022, following the instructions included in the attached pdf below.

The Winter School will be held in person but a hybrid system will be available in case COV­ID 19 will not enable students and lecturers to travel.

More information

Agenda and instructions
Register for the event

Soil Health Networking Day

Enhancing soil health is the ultimate objective of several research projects, initiatives and organizations. Joining forces is crucial to maximise their impact towards sustainable soil and land management.

To this end, on December 8th coordinators of research projects on soil sciences and land use, together with organizations and networks involved in soil health and management, will gather online to identify synergies and share findings and efforts in supporting soil health and related policies.

The meeting is organized and hosted by Fabio Terribile, coordinator of the LANDSUPPORT project.

When: on December 8th, from 9 to 13

How to join: the event will be broadcasted live on LANDSUPPORT YouTube channel

Agenda of the event

Participating projects and initiatives:

Global Soil Partnership

4p1000 Initiative

SIREN (within EJP SOIL)

Soil4Life

SUSCROP – Sustain-able Crop Production

CIRCASA – Soil care for profitable and sustainable crop production in Europe

SIEUSOIL – Sino-EU Soil Observatory for intelligent Land Use Management

AGROMIX – Agroforestry and mixed farming systems

EXCALIBUR – Exploiting the multifunctional potential of belowground biodiversity in horticultural farming

LAND-MARK – Land Management Assessment Research Knowledge base

LANDSUPPORT

Interventions and keynote speeches:

Luca Montanarella, Arwyn Jones, Calogero Schillaci, EU Soil Observatory

Marta Iglesias, European Commission

Fabio Terribile, CRISP – University of Naples, LANDSUPPORT coordinator

Johan Bouma, Emeritus Professor of soil science, Wageningen University, The Netherlands & Antonello Bonfante CNR ISAFOM, Italy

Harold Van Es, Cornell University, USA

Let’s talk about land – LANDSUPPORT goes live! – Autumn episode

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A series of live round tables with LANDSUPPORT experts and guests, to discuss today’s policy and management challenges and how LANDSUPPORT tool can contribute in addressing them.

Watch them on our YouTube channel : https://cutt.ly/Landsupport-youtube

October 20th, 10 am

Forest modelling today: geographical scales, data sources and applications to the real world

Gina Marano, Polytechnic of Zurich; Aleksandar Dujakovic, BOKU – University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences; Vienna Jernej Jevšenak, Slovenian Forestry Institute

LANDSUPPORT bemutató a Zöld Civil Országos Találkozón

Immár harmincadik alkalommal rendezték meg a Környezet- és Természetvédő Civil Szervezetek Országos Találkozóját, melynek Keszthelyen a Georgikon Campus adott otthont 2021. augusztus 27-29. között.

A találkozó lehetőséget biztosított a Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézetének (iASK), hogy bemutassa a LANDSUPPORT projekt keretében fejlesztés alatt álló talajt és tájhasználatot védő döntéstámogató rendszert.

Az eseményen részt vevőkkel közösen néztük meg az eszközök működését. A szombat délelőtti szekcióülés után egész nap lehetőség volt a programmal való ismerkedésre, annak tesztelésére a közösségi térben felállított standnál. A megjelenőket arra kértük, mondják el véleményüket róla. Ezeket a véleményeket továbbítottuk a fejlesztőknek, hogy az eszközök valódi segítséget nyújthassanak a majdani használóknak.


LANDSUPPORT introduction at the Hungarian Civil Green Parliament

This year, the 30th Hungarian Civil Green Parliament, the National Assembly of the Environmental and Nature Protection Civil Organisations was organised. The event was held in Keszthely between 27-29 of August 2021.

The meeting provided an opportunity to iASK to introduce the decision support system under development within the LANDSUPPORT project aiming at protecting soil and landscape. 

The operation of the tools was introduced at a participative workshop. After the workshop the program was available for testing to anyone at the stand in the public area. Those interested in the tools were asked about their opinions, which were transferred to the developers in order to shape and refine the tools to the needs of the actual users.

Extended LANDSUPPORT tutorials now available in Italian!

4th LANDSUPPORT General Assembly went online again!

For the second year in a row, the LANDSUPPORT team could not meet in person, and the 4th General Assembly meeting was organized online by project partner MODIS. And they did a good job, by balancing presentations, discussions and fun activities across three half days, from June 28th to 30th.

This GA came about at a key moment of the LANDSUPPORT project: three years have already come by, and several tools are becoming available for testers and users. Besides, we are entering the final project year, and this requires a careful planning of activities, including the development of the final version of the tools and their promotion around Europe.

But even online, it was not only work-work-work, and we could also have some fun. Some pioneer LANDSUPPORT users made some videos to tell us about their experiences with LANDSUPPORT out there in the real world – for example, a local guide is using the dedicated tool to develop itineraries for ecotourists in Campania. During storytelling videos, we were happy to learn about the experiences that pioneer Landsupport users had with the tools applied in the real world. For example..Their positive feedback motivate us further to pursue our goals!

 To bring faraway team members closer to each other, MODIS divided us in groups and organized a quiz with questions about the five continents – to give us a bit of a travel feeling despite restrictions.

The next virtual GA is planned for October 26, 2021. The final GA meeting –  the one closing the project – will be in Naples next spring – where we hope to meet in person after such a long time.

A workshop in Hungary, to present the Landsupport tools

A series of workshops have been implemented these last months to present the Landsupport tools to local stakeholders and potential users, in three countries: Italy, Austria and Hungary. The most recent one took place on July 28 in Zala County, Hungary.

Representants from the Local Government of Zala County presented several tools available on the Landsupport platform: tool A “Ameliorate implementation land policies “, tool B “Climate resilient agriculture”, tool D “CAP institutions”, tool E “Cross-compliance and conditionality”, tool F “Improve ecosystem services”, tool H Forestry”, tool M “Green infrastructure” and tool O “Sustainable tourism”), with 5 cross-thematic focuses: (1) Agrotourism – Label of your farm, (2) Gain of Ecosystem services, (3) New urban development, (4) Fragmentation and (5) Land-general climatic anomalies.

workshop-hungary

In total, 9 selected participants took part in these discussions. The workshop also served to identify additional stakeholders that would be interested in getting information on the results of the LANDSUPPORT project.