Soil description and monitoring:

Soil profiles are generally described according to IUSS (IUSS Working Group

WRB, 2014) and chemical and physical analysiscarried out in the CNR laboratories.

Soil monitoring refers principally to the monitoring of soil water content or soil pressure head by means of  TDR or tensiometers probes. For both, an own system for data collection in the field has been built inside of Lab to monitor in real time the soil conditions.

Moreover, the lab is equipped to support the monitorng of soil spatial characteristics as S.O. or nutrients by means of different approaches (e.g. SWIR spectrometers) 

Weather monitorig:

Weather monitoring is realized with different weather monitoring systems. Currently, we use Davis Enviromonitor system and the Netsense system in the vineyard. 

Moreover, the lab is able to create itself IOT systems for sensors application in field as TDR probes, tensiometer and weather sensors.

Climate change scenarios analysis:

Climate scenarios impacts on agricolture is realized by means of hybrid land evaluation (HLEs) approaches (Bonfante et al., 2015, 2018). At the base of this approach there is the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches of land evaluations. In particular, the quantitative approach is based on the use of simulation models of SPA system, which are generally calibrated and validated before their use in the study areas.

For further information see:

Bonfante, A., et. al., 2015 Adv. Agronomy. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.agron.2015.05.001

Bonfante, A.,et al., , 2017 Sci. Total Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.214

Bonfante,A 2018. Sci. Total Environ. 624. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971733454X 

Simulation modelling of SPA system:

The simulation modeling of SPA is realized in different agricultural systems (crops, vineyards, orchards), under different pedoclimatic conditions, applying different models (e.g. SWAP, CropSyst, MACRO, ANIMO) able to solve the soil water and nutrients balance (e.g. Nitrogen). The calibrated and validated models can be used to study the impacts of Climate change (e.g. on crop production) or to study the soil's health when degradation processes occurred. 

In general, the use of simulation models starting from field and lab soil characterization, the data derived from soil monitoring used to calibrate and validate the model (e.g. comparing soil water content simulated and measured at different soil depths) and the calibrated model to simulate the impacts on the agricultural system (at a different scale, local to regional) of Climate change on crop adaptation, irrigation water supply and nitrogen leaching; or to identify the optimization of irrigation in a DSS application in a real application and so on..