Resilient farming by adaptive microclimate management (StarGate)

Since the mid-20th century, the Earth’s climate has been rapidly changing. Amongst others, this includes changes of the diurnal temperature, rainfall patterns including the number of wet and dry spells, as well as altered the frequency, duration and spatial distribution of extreme weather like hailstorms, windstorms, frost, and heat wave events.

Agriculture is perhaps the most weather/climate dependent sector of the economy, and changes in the weather/climatic patterns are strongly affecting it, in terms of the productivity, risk assessment/management, and environmental preservation.

From the other, the current farm practices are producing the 1/4th of the global greenhouse gas emissions annually, contributing and further enhancing the climate change, retaining a continuous cycle of altering the climate and impacting the food production system. The only way to break this cycle, is to change the current farm practices and methods of landscape management, as well as the associated policies, through the development, promotion and adoption of innovative climate smart practices and methods that will help the food production system to adapt to the climate change and become more sustainable, while mitigating the climate shocks more effectively, becoming more resilient.

STARGATE aspires to develop a breakthrough, multiscale and holistic climate smart agriculture methodology, capitalizing innovations in the field of microclimate and weather risk management, as well as in the field of landscape design. It will be based on Earth Observation, weather/climate intelligence and IoT technologies to support a more effective farm/parcel management and related options for adaptation on climatic changes, local and regional policy formulation leading to better landscape management, protection against climatic risks and implementation related to mitigation on microclimate changes.