LTRs win Horizon 2020 grants

Two Leading Research Teams: Water - Climate - Environment (WCE), whose leader is prof. Ewa Burszta-Adamiak, and the Space and Close Earth Observation Sciences (SpaceOS), under the leadership of professor Witold Rohm, have become partners of the WATERAGRI project "Water retention and nutrient recycling in soils and streams for improved agricultural production".

The project involves 23 partners – universities, institutes, research centres and entrepreneurs providing innovative technologies – from 12 European countries. The leader is Lund University from Sweden, and the budget of the project financed under the Horizon 2020 programme is 7 million EUR, 286,000 of which will go for UPWr research. The project manager at UPWr is Wiesław Fiałkiewicz PhD, a specialist in water management and modelling of hydrological processes.

The aim of the consortium is to seek new opportunities for water resource management in small agricultural catchments that will improve European agricultural production and the condition of local ecosystems. Based on mathematical models and sustainable solutions in the field of water retention and nutrient recycling, a decision-making framework will be created for farmers, improving agricultural production, which is supposed to maintain the growing world population and meet current and future challenges related to climate change. The project will develop traditional methods of drainage and irrigation, innovative solutions using natural processes such as plant treatment and biochar systems, as well as remote sensing and agrometeorological monitoring techniques.

The members of the LRTs and scientists from the Department of Plant Nutrition at UPWr will focus on research in the field of integrated hydrological modelling and monitoring of water resources in an agricultural catchment (WCE), monitoring of vegetation with remote sensing techniques and the development of data necessary for making, among other things, digital terrain and surface runoff models (SpaceOS) and interpretation of information related to the state of vegetation (Department of Plant Nutrition). The scientists from UPWr will, in cooperation with the Agricultural Advisory Centre and farmers, assess specific needs concerning water and nutrient retention, develop a set of technologies which will be affordable and easy to implement, and perform field tests.