Projects | Dr. Christophe Dominik

Agri4Pol

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Description

AGRI4POL’s ambition is to assist the transition of agriculture from being a pressure on pollinators to becoming a positive force for managing and restoring pollinator biodiversity, crop pollination services, and co-benefits to ecosystems and people.

Funding

Horizon Europe

Principal Investigators

Adam J. Vanbergen

ANTENNA

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Description

In the light of ongoing pollinator declines and their exceptional relevance for human food security, economy, and the functioning of ecosystems, the EU Pollinators Initiative (revised in 2023) has defined ‘establishing a comprehensive monitoring system’ as its first action. A European-wide Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU PoMS) is currently piloted (SPRING project), which will represent a stronghold of transnational pollinator monitoring, though several major gaps remain. Modern technologies, such as robotics, computer vision, and molecular methods, can complement such approaches to help overcome key monitoring gaps by increasing taxonomic and geographic coverage, speed, accuracy, content and efficiency of identification, and temporal resolution. However, technology readiness differs among available tools and further research is needed to design, advance and adapt technology towards integrated transnational pollinator monitoring – together with context-specific guidance on how to best combine approaches based on their synergistic value and cost- efficiency. Also, integrated information from different monitoring approaches (‘traditional’ and novel) need to inform near real-time early warning systems to allow for adaptive monitoring, conservation, and restoration interventions.

The overarching goal of ANTENNA is to fill key monitoring gaps through advancing innovative technologies that will underpin and complement EU-wide pollinator monitoring schemes, and to provide tested transnational pipelines from monitoring activities to curated datasets and enhanced indicators that support pollinator-relevant policy and end-users.

Funding

BiodivERsA
February 2024 to February 2027

Principal Investigators

Oliver Schweiger

WildPosh

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Description

Wild fauna and flora are facing variable and challenging environmental disturbances. One of the animal groups that is most impacted by these disturbances are pollinators. Pollinators face multiple threats, but the spread of anthropogenic chemicals (i.e. pesticides) form a major potential driver of these threats. WilPosh is a multi-actor, transdisciplinary project whose overarching mission and ambition are to significantly improve the evaluation of the risk to wild pollinators of pesticide exposure, and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe.

Funding

Horizon Europe

Principal Investigators

Denis Michez

RestPoll

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Description

RestPoll is a highly transdisciplinary project aiming to provide society with tools to reverse wild pollinator declines and to position Europe as a global leader in pollinator restoration. RestPoll will, together with stakeholders ranging from individual land managers to governments, co-design, evaluate, and refine measures and cross-sectoral approaches to restore pollinators and their services. The RestPoll consortium combines the expertise of natural and social scientists, NGOs, businesses, and ministries. Stakeholders along the food value chain will be engaged through newly developed participatory approaches at diverse social, ecological, and political scales. Central to RestPoll is the establishment of a Europe-wide network of pollinator restoration case-study areas and Living Labs (LL), which are unique hubs for experimentation, demonstration, and mutual learning. RestPoll aims to position Europe as a global leader and set the future agenda for pollinator restoration worldwide. The transdisciplinary RestPoll consortium will develop, test, evaluate and refine cross-sectoral pollinator restoration approaches to conserve biodiversity and to benefit nature and society. To restore wild pollinator diversity and their vital pollination services, RestPoll will co-design measures with different stakeholders (ranging from individual land managers to governments) at various spatial scales (field, farm, landscape, European scales), in agricultural landscapes that are dominated by intensively managed crops or grasslands. Our holistic approach, informed by cutting-edge transdisciplinary research, will integrate stakeholders and actors at multiple levels as well as natural and social science disciplines to engage in participatory planning and development of new business models. Learning outcomes will be disseminated by regional to European multi-actor partners and collaborators, which will ensure impact beyond the end of the project.

Funding

Horizon Europe

Principal Investigators

Alexandra Klein

MAMBO

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Description

Advancements in technology have evolved to an extent where it is now possible to identify organisms remotely from digital data such as images or sound. In particular, new tools in the realm of high spatial resolution remote sensing have the potential to greatly enrich traditional approaches of ecological monitoring.

The status of biodiversity in Europe is generally below standard and many targets are not being met. This is why MAMBO’s work programme aims to provide the knowledge, tools and infrastructure for monitoring wildlife and their habitats more comprehensively. The project will develop novel monitoring tools that will enhance knowledge of the state of biodiversity in Europe. Through its demonstration sites, MAMBO will showcase the effectiveness and added value of its new technologies.

Automating biodiversity monitoring is a more cost-efficient and rapid process that allows for upscaling. MAMBO has the potential to dramatically improve the ecological monitoring landscape in Europe and beyond and in that way, contribute to the aims of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.

Funding

HORIZON 2020 EU
September 2022 to August 2026

Principal Investigators

Toke Thomas Høye

Safeguard

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Description

Safeguard brings together world-leading researchers, NGOs, industry and policy experts to substantially contribute to Europe’s capacity to reverse the losses of wild pollinators. Safeguard will significantly expand current assessments of the status and trends of European wild pollinators including bees, butterflies, flies and other pollinating insects.

Funding

Horizon 2020 EU
September 2021 to August 2025

Principal Investigators

Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter

iNTERACT

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Description

Land-use intensification is a major threat to biodiversity, affecting natural pest control and pollination services. While impacts at community levels are well documented, we focus on a mechanistic understanding of pathways impacting the health of beneficial arthropods. With field experiments, we will (1) test the effects of resource availability, landscape structure and pesticide application on the gut microbiome of pollinators (bumblebees), biocontrol agents (ground beetles) and pest species (pollen beetle) as a proxy for organismic health, and (2) identify the subsequent impact on performance (colony performance of bumblebees, abundances of carabids). With our interdisciplinary team, we seek to support healthy beneficial insect populations for sustainable agricultural landscapes, with high relevance for the EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Restoration Plan in general.

Funding

UFZ and iDiv Support funds 2021

Principal Investigators

Christophe Dominik

Official website

INTERCEDE

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Description

INTERCEDE will address the impacts of increasing landscape homogenization (reduced landscape heterogeneity, removal of remnant semi-natural vegetation) and crop specialization on farmland biodiversity and agricultural yields. Both aspects are expected to become more relevant with climate change and resulting pressures on agriculture (drought, extreme events). To address our central aim to understand agricultural landscapes as social-ecological systems, we have designed three interdisciplinary projects that will be integrated through specific college synthesis activities (Review paper, Synthesis of historic changes in landscape structure and crop diversity, Synthesis of effects of land use intensification on biodiversity and yield; see section 2):

Project I: Scaling up predictions in mixed-use agricultural systems
Project II: Effects of landscape heterogeneity and crop diversity on biological pest control and pollinator health
Project III: Landscape-scale effects of agricultural diversification strategies: Combining multi-objective optimization and agent-based modelling

Funding

UFZ 2020 - 2023

Principal investigators

VOODOO

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Description

VOODOO will generate new knowledge on the disease risk in different landscapes to pollinators arising from the effects of urban and agricultural land-use on floral resources, pollinator foraging and viral pathogen coinfection and transmission. We will achieve this through measurement of field-sampled plant-pollinator-virus communities with high-resolution molecular analysis, laboratory and field experiments, modelling and analysing perceptions of disease risk among stakeholders.

Funding

BiodivERsA
January 2020 to September 2023

Principal Investigators

PoshBee

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Description

PoshBee (Pan-European assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of stressors on the health of bees) aims to support healthy bee populations, sustainable beekeeping and pollination across Europe. Integrating the knowledge and experience of academics, beekeepers and farmers, PoshBee will:

provide the first pan-European quantification of the exposure hazard of chemicals to managed and wild bees;
determine how chemicals alone, in mixtures, and in combination with pathogens and nutrition, affect bee health, and;
meet the need for monitoring tools, novel screening protocols, and practice- and policy-relevant research outputs to local, national, European, and global stakeholders.

Funding

Horizon 2020-EU
June 2018 to May 2023.

Principal Investigators

Mark Brown

LEGATO

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Description

LEGATO stands for ‘Land-use intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems’ and aims to advance long-term sustainable development of irrigated rice fields, against risks arising from multiple aspects of global change. The overall objective is the elaboration and testing of generally applicable principles within the frame of ecological engineering – an emerging discipline, concerned with design, monitoring and construction of ecosystems.

Funding

BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
March 2011 to February 2016.

Principal investigators

Josef Settele

Rice terraces of Batad

ECOSAL ATLANTIS

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Description

The main objective of “ECOSAL ATLANTIS project - Ecotourism in the Atlantic salt-marshes: a strategy for integral and sustainable development” is to arrive at a joint, integral and sustainable development in tourism, based on the cultural and natural heritage of traditional salt-producing areas of the Atlantic. The project revolves around three key activities that involve the touristic development of the saltpans of the Atlantic: Heritage, Territorial Development and Biodiversity and Eco-Tourism.

Funding

EU INTERREG
2007 to 2013

Official website

http://ecosal-atlantis.ua.pt/