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Research Projects

Read about individual research projects and activities at IIASA.

Research Partners

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Models, Tools & Data

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Food & Water Research Projects

Below is a selection of research projects currently under way in the Food and Water research area:

Assessing Climate Change Impacts on China’s Agro-Ecosystem

Researchers are creating a multi-scale agro-ecosystem model by combining two leading crop models, allowing for an analysis of both farm-level and regional agricultural dynamics that will assist in developing strategies to climate change-induced changes to China’s agriculture. More

Livestock Production Scenarios (AnimalChange)

AnimalChange creates scenarios that project 20 and 40 years into the future to allow policymakers to see what impact climate change is likely to have on livestock production in Europe, Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. More

Extreme Weather Impacts on Carbon Sinks (CARBO-Extreme)

European ecosystems help stabilize the atmosphere by soaking up significant amounts of the carbon in fossil fuel emissions, but researchers are concerned that the effectiveness of these carbon sinks might be diminished by expected increases in extreme weather. More

CATSEI

The CATSEI-project (acronym for the above title) studies the impacts of China’s vigorous agricultural transition, on the country itself, as well on its trading partners, the EU in particular. It follows a quantitative approach, supplemented by qualitative investigations. The quantitative research takes as point of departure the Chinagro-I policy simulation model developed in the earlier CHINAGRO project. More

Impact of European Union Consumption on Deforestation

The EU is a major importer of food and timber products from countries with significant deforestation rates, and these European trade and consumption patterns may cause deforestation in distant lands. More

Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Living Systems

This project will improve models for assessing the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of living systems to allow a better understanding of human-induced impacts on the biosphere More

Eco-evolutionary Vegetation Modeling and Management

The development of eco-evolutionary models will allow scientists to better understand how plants around the world respond to climate change and disturbances such as fires and grazing. More

Improving Earth Observation Methodology (EGIDA)

EGIDA is a technical project to create a standard methodology to support GEOSS, the Global Earth Observations System of Systems, through development of evaluation processes, assessment indexes, and databases. More

Energy Use Impacts on the Environment (EnerGEO)

EnerGEO assesses the current and future impact of energy use on the environment by linking environmental observation systems with the processes involved in exploiting energy resources. More

EuroGEOSS — A European Approach to GEOSS

EuroGEOSS contributes to the international effort to create the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) by making existing systems that gather data on forestry, drought, and biodiversity interoperable and easier to use. More

Evolutionarily Sustainable Consumption

The evolutionary consequences of fishing affect a host of heritable traits in fish populations, and IIASA researchers are developing a toolkit to allow scientists to assess these impacts. More

Weather Forecasts and Soil Data for African Farms (FarmSupport)

FarmSupport is developing an application to provide farmers in Ethiopia and Kenya with weather forecasts and soil moisture information to help them make better agricultural decisions. More

Future Impacts of Climate Change (FutureSoc)

FutureSoc is an effort to define the consequences of climate change on future human societies and examine the ability of those societies to cope with the coming changes. More

Using GEO for Early Warning and Food Security in East Africa (GEOSAF)

GEOSAF researchers will create short-term soil moisture forecasts using several crop growth and soil moisture models. More

Sources and Sinks for Greenhouse Gases (GHG-Europe)

GHG-Europe is analyzing European agricultural and forestry lands to determine both the sources and sinks for three major greenhouse gases and determine what percentage of those gases is anthropogenic. More

Water Futures and Solutions: World Water Scenarios

Water resources are central to development and poverty alleviation. Yet decision makers face many challenges to ensuring their sustainable and equitable use. More

Integrated Assessment of Fisheries

This project is developing tools that integrate the biological, social, and economic aspects of fishery systems to help create management systems that promote sustainable fisheries More

Climate Change and Agricultural Productivity (ISAC)

High-frequency, high-resolution imaging from new satellites is providing detailed agricultural information that will allow scientists to better monitor the impacts of drought and climate change on crops and model future agricultural productivity under different climate change scenarios. More

Life Cycle Impacts of Goods, Services, Activities (LC-IMPACT)

The LC-IMPACT project is developing methods to assess the environmental life cycle impact of a vast number of goods, services and activities. The assessments examine the environmental costs of such things as erosion caused by land use and threats from toxic substances used in production processes. More