Understanding and combating desertification to mitigate its impact on ecosystem services

Objective

UNDESERT aims at combatting desertification and land degradation in order to mitigate their impacts on ecosystem services, and following on human livelihoods. The West African region is central for understanding desertification and degradation processes, which are already severe and widespread as a consequence of climate change and human impact. An improved understanding of the effects of desertification and degradation processes is obtained on a local to regional scale by integrating remote sensing information with sound field data on biodiversity and soil as well as socioeconomic and climate data. On this basis decision support models and tools will be developed and introduced to natural resource managers. UNDESERT also includes two very practical aspects, 1) restoration through tree plantations, which will be certified for CO2 marketing as the first restoration site in West Africa, 2) ecosystem management based on scientific data and best practices developed in close collaboration between scientists and local communities. As a demand driven project, UNDESERT activities will be implemented by employing 17 young PhD students, who will receive training to enhance future capacities to manage risks and uncertainties in the frame of future demographic and climatic changes. The scientific results will be used to combat desertification and degradation directly and will be transferred to international programs in order to contribute to the implementation of relevant international strategies, initiatives and commitments of the EU and African countries.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology environmental engineering remote sensing
• natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
• natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
• engineering and technology environmental engineering ecosystem-based management

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-ENVIRONMENT - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Environment (including Climate Change)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• ENV.2009.2.1.3.2 - Desertification process and land degradation

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-ENV-2009-1
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP-SICA - Small/medium-scale focused research project for specific cooperation actions dedicated to international cooperation partner countries(SICA)

Coordinator

Participants (8)