The IAFES Division conducts research in the context of the interaction between climate and terrestrial ecosystems, taking into account new development pathways in the post-pandemic world, the new EU policies (e.g. CAP, Climate Law), strategies (Green Deal, Digital) and initiatives (Copernicus, Destination Earth), as well as the new Horizon Europe Programme (including its Missions) and the projects under the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (PNRR).
The Division’s research activities pay attention to keep data and software strategy aligned to the one of CMCC (e.g. in terms of programming languages, data interoperability and FAIR principles) and to support decision making processes on land-based climate change adaptation and mitigation options at local, national and international level, by: (i) improving public awareness on climate change and communicating related risks and vulnerabilities; (ii) co-designing with users innovative solutions and mechanisms for a systemic transformation of the territory; and (iii) guiding the formulation of climate-related strategies and plans, fostering transitions toward greater resource efficiency and contributing to SDGs.
Research Units
Research Unit Leaders: Maria Vincenza Chiriacò and Valentina Mereu
This research line is dedicated to the design, development and testing of modeling approaches, with different complexity, to reproduce feedback between climate and terrestrial ecosystems – the latter considered as a mosaic of natural environments and human-managed systems, including inland freshwater bodies – and among their connected components (soil, water, vegetation), related functions and services. The adopted approaches include: climate-based indicators or indices, empirical functions, process-based models or “hybrid” methods, and statistical tools up to machine learning (ML) algorithms.
Research Unit Leaders: Marta Debolini and Roberta Padulano
This research line focuses on designing, developing and implementing frameworks and tools that integrate multiple feedbacks across numerous environmental and socio-economic dimensions, especially concerning the multi-sectoral competition for water resources and land systems. The research is applied at various scales (e.g., farm to watershed, landscape to region), considering climate change and other global drivers, land use dynamics in particular, in order to assist and implement new adaptation pathways and new forms of ecosystem conservation, land governance, and water management across sectors, and the broad concept of water security.
Research Unit Leaders: Serena Marras and Dario Papale
This research line aims at measuring carbon and water cycles as well as ecosystems responses to climate change and other stresses. Synergistic monitoring platforms and networks (in-situ to remote) will provide detailed data on which applying innovative data integration and post-processing chains to assess interconnected ecosystems dynamics, identify plant functional and structural traits, quantify biodiversity aspects and then infer interactions with abiotic (e.g., climate, fires) and biotic (e.g., pests, diseases) factors.
Research Unit Leaders: Monia Santini and Antonio Trabucco
This research line gathers elements of all the previous research lines (producing, among other, data, indicators, models, new workflows for data integration and post-processing) to contribute to some key aspects of the Copernicus and DestinE initiative, taking also opportunities from Earth Observation, up to develop advanced modules to reproduce, and then predict/project, the behavior of ecosystem components under climate change, extreme events (e.g. droughts) and disturbances (e.g. fires), as well as under alternative management options.
IAFES Projects
The Germ of Life project aims at developing, test and uptake a…
The implementation of the agreement foreseen the development of two activities, distinct…
ARCADIA is a project funded by HORIZON Europe Innovation Actions in response…
IAFES Publications
Detecting selective logging in tropical forests with optical satellite data: an experiment in Peru shows texture at 3 m gives the best results
Aquino C., Mitchard E. T. A.; McNicol I. M.; Carstairs H.; Burt A.; Vilca B. L. P.; Mayta S.; Disney M.
2024, Remote Sens Ecol Conserv., doi: 10.1002/rse2.414
Food Sustainability and the Media: Linking Awareness, Knowledge and Action
Antonelli M., Isernia P.
2024, Food Sustainability and the Media: Linking Awareness, Knowledge and Action, Pages 1 - 264, doi: 10.1016/C2020-0-04509-3
Latest on Water, Food, and Land Use
With CMCC’s expertise in high-resolution ocean climate modeling and data assimilation, the fishRISE project developed cutting-edge prototype systems for sustainable onshore and offshore fish farming. These innovations promise to have a significant impact on the aquaculture industry, marking a significant step forward in innovative, sustainable aquaculture.
Although emissions from the agricultural sector, particularly animal farming, impact air quality and public health, they are often ignored in public policy, both at the regional and European levels. A series of new studies led by CMCC, in collaboration with Legambiente Lombardia, shows just how significant the impact of agricultural pollution in the Po Valley, Italy, is – with significant implications for policy choices.
Director
Serena Marras
IAFES Models
The Integrated Desertification Index (IDI) was developed (Santini et al., 2010) to…
The land use change model LUC@CMCC was reformulated in Santini and Valentini…
The coexistence model (Di Paola et al., 2012) is a simple quantitative…
SWAT is a hydrologic model, developed by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS)…
3D-CMCC-FEM – Three Dimension Forest Ecosystem Model (Collalti et al., 2014; Collalti…