PROJECT OBJECTIVES

GEOCARBON is a preparatory project establishing processes and data mining for permitting the future realization of Carbon Farming Calculation Tool(s). The main gap when dealing with carbon balance from agriculture is the lack of Activity Data by farmers that they are related by agriculture management such as crop involved, rotation or not, ploughing type, chemical fertilization type, disinfection type, organic amendment type, etc. This huge amount of information can only be precisely provided by farmers, being the key point. At the centre of our approach lies a Community of Practice (CoP). CoP is a network that will foster the estimation of soil carbon emissions, co-participation in Activity Data acquisition as well as the usability and effectiveness of the suggested tools. This network will integrate farmers, agriculturalists, soil scientists, public – reporting authorities and decision makers. The CoP will interact with a web-GIS (Geographical Information System), an online portal will be developed to store, visualize and process geospatial information from existing databases as well gather Activity Data. The web-GIS will have a bidirectional relationship with the CoP. CoP knowledge will assist in the creation of the environmental geo-database stored in the web-GIS, useful for farming carbon calculation, and the web-GIS will assist CoP in the decision making through data queries and visualization. Our overarching result is to integrate knowledge about farming practices, which are not recorded so far, within the CoP and develop actionable approaches that will be supported by farmers in a seamless integration with their actual behaviour to the field. The added value of the GEOCARBON project is to involve farmers, which hold this information exclusively, to fill this gap which exists in Activity Data acquisition. The project will encourage farmers to insert the data relating to their agricultural activities by using a friendly mobile web-GIS application in their smartphones. The provided Activity Data will be saved automatically in a Geospatial Database that will be the core of the project. At the same time, GEOCARBON will identify, evaluate, and harmonise all relevant soil databases across Mediterranean countries participating in the project (Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal – “GEOCARBON countries”). The project will initially focus on citrus orchards and olive trees in order to eliminate uncertainties derived from multi-category cropland systems. Moreover, in GEOCARBON project, the agroforestry systems will be a significant part of our application study areas. GEOCARBON is a LIFE preparatory project aiming at gathering, updating, and harmonizing the existing spatial knowledge system regarding carbon balance at farming level by applying IT-based decisionmaking tools. Existing geospatial data and methods will be investigated to integrate them into a predeveloped framework for building a Carbon Farming Calculation Tool, which will be completed in a future pilot/demonstration project. This will directly lead to the development of an incentive mechanism needed by adopting more sustainable Carbon Farming practices. The specific objectives are: 1. bridging the gap between farmers and scientific community through the CoP approach; 2. integrating geo-spatial data and CoP feedback in order to identify the Activity Data influence in soil carbon balance in Mediterranean conditions; 3. enhancing the participation and involvement of farmers and agriculture stakeholders in climate change mitigation under the umbrella of CoP; 4. Underlying the role of farmers against the climate change by encouraging their contribution to adopt sustainable management practices.