the GlobalChangeBiology blog

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 will start 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 suc

The ENEA Technical Unit for Sustainable Development and Agro-industrial Innovation ( UTAGRI ) organized a course on "Using open source software for remote sensing and GIS applications" sponsored by the GlobalChangeBiology project and taught by Dr. Markus Neteler, head of the GIS and Remote Sensing Unit at Fondazione Edmund Mach (Trento, Italy). 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 attra

The ENEA Technical Unit for Sustainable Development and Agro-industrial Innovation ( UTAGRI ) organized a seminar on "Geographic Free and Open Source Software 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

During a meeting of the Italian National Academy of Entomology held in Florence on 18 February 2012, Luigi Ponti delivered a public lecture titled "Management of invasive species in the frame of an agro-ecological vision: the case study of Tuta absoluta (Meyrick)". The talk was part of a workshop on T. absoluta where Italian research stakeholders reported on this major invasive pest problem for the Mediterranean Basin. Dr. Ponti's talk focused on how physiologically-based weather-driven demographic models ( CASAS models) integrated into a GIS may aid ecologically-based management of invasive species such as T. absoluta by sorting out the complexity of the global change biology involved. Examples of how invasive species can be assessed in the frame of an agro-ecological vision were provided and prospective applications to T. absoluta outlined along with common misunderstanding about invasive species that may be clarified using the modeling approach of the GlobalChang