Impact

Transfer of knowledge

Transferring Ecosystem Modeling (EM) capability to ENEA would enhance the knowledge that this institution has accumulated, including that on desertification and climate change, by embedding it into the models/GIS permanent library. This would build a capacity to add new knowledge as it becomes available within the wide range of expertise of ENEA, thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of the EM/GIS tool.

To ease the knowledge transfer process, the ENEA Technical Unit for Sustainable Development and Agro-industrial Innovation (UTAGRI) organized a seminar on "Geographic Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) for remote sensing and GIS: a toolbox for the GlobalChangeBiology project" by Dr. Markus Neteler, head of the GIS and Remote Sensing Unit at Fondazione Edmund Mach (Trento, Italy). The seminar highlighted a wide range of applications implemented via open source software such as remote sensing of biophysical parameters, landscape analysis, environmental modeling, geostatistics, geomorphology, machine learning, management of emerging infectious diseases, and others. Thanks to the GlobalChangeBiology project, ENEA deploys a unique technology in Europe that provides a sound scientific platform for laying out effective response strategies to global change in agriculture. Open source geospatial software is key to achieving a major goal of the GlobalChangeBiology project, namely to link agroecosystem analysis with remote sensing data so as to bridge the gap between bottom-up and top-down GIS approaches for assessing on-ground ecosystem-level problem.

In addition to providing an overview on available GFOSS tools via the seminar, UTAGRI built a common expertise by organizing a course on "Using open source software for remote sensing and GIS applications" sponsored by the GlobalChangeBiology project and also taught by Dr. Neteler. The course was held at the ENEA Casaccia Research Center and spanned two days of intensive work (17-18 January 2012). After an introduction to open source GIS, the course moved to practical issues such as software installation, data import and a simple analysis. The remote sensing part started with a review of available data sets, followed by an overview on data import and processing (analysis of time series and classification). Database management was also covered with a focus on SQL, which introduced vector data editing. Last, the GRASS-R interface was illustrated. Even though the course was targeted to ENEA researchers, it attracted interest from and was attended by several researchers working in other national research centers such as CNR and CRA.

Contribution to European research

Currently, only the UC Berkeley group has implemented tri-trophic EM for regional weather driven analyses. The transfer of this technology and the immense potential for improving it and applying it to European climate change issues in agriculture and renewable resource management issues is an incredible opportunity. The basic methods enable modelling individuals, single and meta-populations and regional populations (this proposal). The biological models have contributed to basic theory and to the solution of applied field problems in agriculture. The model was also used as the basis for developing a general bioeconomic model that includes the population dynamics of the renewable resource and the manager in the bioeconomic objective function. The bioeconomic model is at the forefront in the analysis of ecological-economic-social systems.

Agriculture, food security and climate change in Europe

The GlobalChangeBiology project is part of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE – JPI) funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Program. The goal of FACCE – JPI is to achieve, support and promote integration, alignment and joint implementation of national resources under a common research and innovation strategy to address the diverse challenges in agriculture, food security and climate change. Partnering MACSUR, the first pilot action of FACCE – JPI that started officially in June 2012 (see first newsletter), the GlobalChangeBiology project will provide case studies on grape and olive systems in the Mediterranean Basin. The MACSUR project is a knowledge hub that brings together 73 research groups from across Europe and will provide a detailed climate change risk assessment for European agriculture and food security, in collaboration with international projects including the GlobalChangeBiology project. As such, GlobalChangeBiology enhances the international dimensions of FACCE – JPI.