Agro-Ecological Systems: 2014

The AES group of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program plans to focus on:

• making structural improvements to the EPIC model at global and European level,
• carrying out project obligations, and
• setting scientific benchmarks through the publication of scientific papers.

Importantly, the IMBALANCE-P project, led by IIASA and partners, will be bolstered by the work five postdoctoral researchers, based at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) in Barcelona, Spain. The project, which has been funded by a special European Research Council grant, aims to:

1. quantify and understand the responses of life, society and the Earth system to current and future shortages of phosphorous (P)  plus the stoichiometric imbalance of nitrogen (N) to P created by widespread N additions and rising atmospheric CO2, and
2. to identify the options available to improve the management of the P cycle which, to date, has been considered in a fragmented, single-discipline approach.   

IIASA will improve input information and calibration of phosphorus dynamics for the EPIC model so that phosphorus cycling and its impact on global cropping systems is reliably represented. In cooperation with the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications, Spain, the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and the University of Versailles St Quentin, France.

As a long-term objective, the AES team will extend global EPIC to include 15 major world crops and perform extensive scenario simulations to pursue integrative linking with GLOBIOM. These structural improvements imply extended computational capacities. Potential benefits will be explored of merging IIASA's EPIC and the GEPIC model (the GIS-based EPIC; [1]).   

Last edited: 20 April 2016