Impact of climate change on agricultural and natural ecosystems #1977

This book illustrates the main results deriving from fourteen studies, dealing with the impact of climate change on different agricultural and natural ecosystems, carried out within the Impact of Climate change On agricultural and Natural Ecosystems (ICONE) project funded by the ALFA Programme of the European Commission. During this project, a common methodology on several Global Change-related matters was developed and shared among members of scientific communities coming from Latin America and Europe. In order to facilitate this interdisciplinary approach, specific mobility programmes, addressed to post-graduate, Master and PhD students, have been organized. The research, led by the research groups, was focused on the study of the impact of climate change on various environmental features (i.e. runoff in hydrological basins, soil erosion and moisture, forest canopy, sugarcane crop, land use, drought, precipitation, etc). Integrated and shared methodologies of atmospheric physics, remote sensing, eco-physiology and modelling have been applied. The editors are all members of the Dept. of Agronomy and Land Management of the University of Florence. Prof. Marco Bindi has carried out research in the field on the crop simulation model and the effect of climate change on natural and agricultural ecosystems. In 2004 he was appointed lead author of the IPCC 4th assessment report for Chapter 13 – Europe. Giada Brandani, Alessandro Dessì, Camilla Dibari, Roberto Ferrise and Giacomo Trombi are involved in EC-funded projects dealing with various aspects of the impact of climate change on agriculture and natural ecosystems. Dr. Marco Moriondo is also a researcher at the Institute of Bio-meteorology of the National Research Council and has been involved in several EC-funded projects dealing with the use of crop simulation models to quantify the impact of climate change on agricultural production.