Building and Sustaining Transnational and Intersectoral Partnerships for Climate Resilience
Get to know us better!
ClimaPannonia is group of enthusiastic people representing key stakeholders of the Pannonian Biogeographical Area (PBA). We are trying to reduce harmful effects of climate change towards strengthening the resilience of the agricultural sector and the region’s community.
ClimaPannonia team has about 150 researchers of various profiles directly participating in the project.
Our efforts include enabling the widest possible uptake of tested and validated climate neutral solutions for four agriculture subsectors:
(i) water-food nexus, (ii) agroforestry, (iii) organic crop production, (iv) cattle production.
What are the problems we will try to find solutions for?
ClimaPannonia has been designed to confront the adaptation challenges specific to the PBA. The project aims to develop, test and validate practical systemic solutions that can be applied at various scales – from local to regional, national, and even transnational. Here are some of the main challenges that we addressed in this project:
- Water utilization from precipitation collecting ponds is not in an advanced stage
- Exact quantitative analysis of nature based solutions for water retention in different setups and their effect on environmental parameters such as soil water regime have not been studied
- The storage and utilization of different kind of excess waters that appears in agricultural areas has not been solved
- The need for sustainable crop production
- Production of food crops with natural shading with trees in alley cropping system deficiency
- Availability of water for plants decreases, consequently causing stress for plants
- Lack of knowledge and practical evidence of sustainable and productive agroforest practices
- High methane emission in cattle production.
We have a plan and strategy to deal with the aforementioned problems
By implementing innovative systemic solutions and fostering collaboration among the seven countries within the PBA – Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Czechia, and Slovakia – ClimaPannonia will pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient agriculture sector.
Water-food nexus
Our team will enable integration of wetlands into lowland agricultural systems for climate resilience and validate how water retention/storage in wetland improves soil water status in neighboring areas, and agricultural systems. Also, drainage from inland excess water, fishponds or rivers to arable lands will be performed. The storage of inland excess water in sectioned drainage channel after snow melting or heavy rainfall can be a valuable solution for later utilization. Reservoir water can be used directly (irrigation, surface water distribution) or indirectly (subsurface seepage).
Plan is also to create monitoring network to better quantitatively analyse environmental effect of Natural Based Solutions, and assist further planning with the retrieved information.
Organic (sustainable) crop production
PBA needs improvement in climate smart crop rotation. Utilization of legumes (peas, chickpeas and broad bean) and later growing crops with better Nitrogen Use Efficiency i.e. oil flax can help in terms of avoiding drought, improving nitrogen status and soil health.
Also, control of pests and diseases in both legumes and staple crops and grain quality of staple crops will be further improved.
Inclusion of vegetable crops, legumes and staple crops will foster the allelopathy among different used crops, improve nitrogen balance in soil and mitigate insects and pathogens challenges. We will also make vegetable production more efficient and intensive using nutrient rich green manures grown on separate fields. Cut and carry strategy will provide enough nutrients for the demanding vegetable production while preserving soil health.
Agroforestry
Introducing trees into agricultural production provides shade and lower wind speeds, which in turn decrease overall evapotranspiration rates and keep soil moisture levels higher. This is especially valuable in arid or semi-arid conditions. Making a design of the agroforest systems will provide higher protection from extreme weather events (drought, strong winds, and hail) to both crop/fruit inside the system and surrounding borders.
Low methane cattle production
To solve the problem with high methane production, we will apply several practices. First of them is application of selected probiotics under farm conditions and measurement of their efficacy. Also, application of different ozone content in water used for cows consumption under farm conditions and measurement of their efficacy will be applied. Synergic effect of different methane reducing agents, dietary modifications and improved animal management practices will contribute to reduction of methane emission. In the end, for the decomposition of cattle manure, Black Soldier Fly will be used.
Transition of practice to digital form
One of the main products of this project will be creation of supporting tools to facilitate the transition from the natural ecosystem’s in situ state to the digital environment. DigApp will integrate the state of the art technologies in a single platform and develop added value information services.
DigApp has goal to supporting PBA farmers and other key agriculture value-chain stakeholders to quantify the impact of ClimaPannonia (for three agriculture subsectors, as it is not technically feasible for cattle production) on their specific case by developing scenarios as precise as possible.
Author:
PhD student Rada Šućur, UNSFA, University of Novi Sad – Faculty of Agriculture
