The ISAFOM-CNR (Institute for Mediterranean Agricultural and Forestry Systems) has a research team consisting of 52 Research Scientist, 28 technicians and 10 administrative staff.

The mission is to pursue better understanding of biophysical processes in agro-system environments for improving the productivity of agriculture and forests through a sustainable land use, developing tools for: water and vegetation resources management, innovation of agro-food and forestry production, effects of the atmosphere and climate change on agricultural and forestry systems.

Specifically, temporal and spatial multi-scale crop and soil management is the largest topic of research. The main focuses are on: (i) primary production of crops; (ii) traceability of some products (oil, wine) to link the territory to the quality; (iii) environmental sustainability (e.g. water requirements and quality, N leaching, erosion); (iv) adaptation of agriculture to climate change.

With respect to the specific project, CNR-ISAFOM has high expertise on soil hydrology, soil spatial variability, soil modelling, GIS, remote sensing and DSS, soil chemistry, agronomy and Land Use change. Moreover, several Land Evaluation procedures were realized in different application fields (crop adaptation, soil quality, soil pollutant risk) in order to optimize the land use at different scales (farm, district, regional and national). It has also a fully equipped soil hydrology lab a GIS & RS lab and a soil chemistry lab. This expertise was also applied to get funding (e.g. LIFE + SOILCONSWEB) in the area of soil hydrology, soil protection and conservation and nitrate pollution. In particular, in develop a geo-spatial Decision Supporting System (DSS) in a LIFE + European Project (www.landconsultigweb.eu).