Project Summary

CLIMAte change adaptation through SOil and crop MAnagement: synthesis and ways forward

Soil management and cropping systems to enhance soil quality are often proposed as a key way to support the sustainable adaptation of EU agriculture to climate change. Many long term field trials quantified the impact of specific management practices on soil quality and crop performance.

However, the data gathered there has not yet been sufficiently synthesized so that practitioners and policy-makers can draw quantitative and context-specific conclusions concerning the efficacy of management practices as climate adaptation tools.

CLIMASOMA will directly contribute to an alignment of research strategies connecting agricultural management, soil quality and climate adaptation potential through its summary of the literature, its meta-analysis and its identification of knowledge gaps.

The above figure illustrates the complexity of drivers, agents and processes governing the dynamics of soil structure and its effects on the soil-plant-atmosphere system that CLIMASOMA is investigating.