Progetti di ricerca

BUTTERFLY aims to significantly enhance society’s capacity to appraise, foresee, and respond to the threats posed by cascading impacts of pollinator decline. To reach that goal it will establish a testsystem of geographically wellspread multi-actor communities acrosssectors for co-creating proactive pollinator restoration… Leggi tutto solutions and: (1) collect, integrate, manage and share ecological and spatial information on a wide range of known and lesser known pollinators and pollination services provided for wild and cultivated plants, across Europe and selected overseas territories; (2) advance the monetary and non-monetary valuation of marketed and not marketed direct and indirect ecosystem functions and services provided by pollinators, and advance ecosystem accounting; (3) comprehensively model and quantify the macro-economic implications of pollinator decline and country-specific economic butterfly effects of dependencies on pollinators, and assess policy options and scenarios; (4) assess how five key biomass supply chains (food/micronutrients, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biomaterials, biomass energy) depend on pollination and co-create pollinator restoration options that increase resilience of these supply chains; (5) devise, co-create, test and implement transferable tools, interactive atlases and guidelines that enable systematic mainstreaming of proactive pollinator stewardship in vulnerable sectors; (6) conceive indicators for human dimensions and assess and exploit the sociocultural capacity of the concepts: ‘pollinator stewardship’, ‘eco-literacy’, ‘historical agency’ and ‘slow hope’ in reversing pollinator decline. It will inform EU policy processes and build strategic alliances for high-level impact. The BUTTERFLY network of Living Labs will accelerate knowledge transfer and uptake of new business models and serve as breeding place for multi-actor co-creation of knowledge and sustainable solutions, paving the way to pollinator stewardship in all sectors.

ProPollSoil aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between soil health and soil-dependent pollinators, which spend part of their life cycle in or on soil and play vital roles in ecosystems and agriculture, providing services like pollination, decomposition and nutrient cycling.… Leggi tutto However, intensive soil management practices, contamination, and climate change are threatening both these species and soil health. ProPollSoil will identify how soil management and contamination contribute to the decline of soil-dependent pollinators, and use this knowledge to recommend sustainable soil practices and guide conservation and restoration efforts. The project’s multidisciplinary approach, using field monitoring, lab studies, co-creation of research in Living Labs and modelling, involves experts in soil science, pollinator ecology and biology, biodiversity monitoring, big data, social sciences, modelling and ecotoxicology. By contributing to the Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, ProPollSoil will support strategies for reducing soil pollution, improving soil structure, and raising awareness of the importance of soil for pollinators. The project will also develop monitoring methods to assess threats to pollinators under the EU Pollinators Initiative, “A New Deal for Pollinators." Working with the EU Soil Observatory and collaborating closely with HORIZON projects like SOB4ES, RestPoll, BIOservicES and BUTTERFLY, the project will ensure long-term impact through shared sampling, outreach and data tools. Aligned with EU and global biodiversity strategies, ProPollSoil supports SDGs such as halting biodiversity loss (SDG15) and ensuring food security (SDG2). Through a multi-actor approach, engaging stakeholders like farmers, industry, NGOs, citizens and municipalities, ProPollSoil ensures the co-creation of new knowledge, while also promoting soil literacy and highlighting the essential role of healthy soils in maintaining pollinator populations and ecosystem resilience.