Project description
Unearthing the secrets of ancient terraces
Our landscapes play a major role in shaping how societies experience climate change, a topic at the intersection of environment, archaeology and land managment. For instance, cities trap heat while sustainably managed farmlands can help prevent erosion. Among the most remarkable of these human-made systems are agricultural terraces, which stabilise soil, store carbon and water, and support biodiversity. However, their origins, evolution and decline remain poorly understood. With this in mind, the ERC-funded TerraForm project aims to explore how these structures developed and what their loss means for the future. The focus is on Malta, one of the world's most terraced landscapes. TerraForm shows how ancient terracing practices can inform modern strategies for soil protection, food security, and climate resilience.
Objective
Human-modified landscapes modulate the effects of climate change on human societies. For example, concrete surfaces increase flood risks and dense cities exacerbate the effects of warming. However, urbanisation is not the only major form of landscape modification. Agricultural terraces represent one of the largest-scale human modifications of the planet, and have many positive effects for cultivation, soil retention, carbon and water storage, and biodiversity. Despite their profound importance for soil modification and a sustainable future, the causes, chronology, and consequences of terracing are all poorly understood, as is the impact of their growing abandonment. This limits our ability to understand how climate change will impact human societies, and the extent to which terraces can help build resilience and sustainability.
Pilot research suggests that terracing may have had a uniquely early development on the Maltese Islands, which ultimately became one of the most heavily terraced landscapes on Earth. TerraForm will therefore use Malta as a model system for understanding the evolution and consequences of terracing, from inception to abandonment, alongside societal feedbacks over time. Through its small size, remote location, and limited soil development, Malta offers controlled conditions for such a study. As Malta sits at the front line of climate change, understanding terracing here also has urgent implications for soil erosion, food security, and flooding - both regionally and in areas facing analogous futures. Finally, many of Malta’s terraces have recently been abandoned and are rapidly collapsing, resulting in the loss of an important archive for climate mitigation. Using Malta as a model system is therefore timely, and as the most intensive single-locus study of terracing ever conducted, TerraForm will generate multidisciplinary data and transferable methodologies to ultimately inform sustainable land use policies and improve planetary health.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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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.
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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.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
MSD 2080 MSIDA
Malta
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.