Some major funders are now supporting multidisciplinary, integrative projects on the roles of legumes in contributing to ecosystem services and ecosystem-scale outputs. Services and outputs include soil processes and soil microbial activity, sequestration and loss of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling and food web dynamics.
Legume Futures is itself one such integrative project. To see others, click a link in the list below to move down the page for a brief description of each project and web link.
- Biodiversty and ecosystem processes PhD
- Fabatropimed Africa and the Mediterranean Basin
Biodiversity and ecosystem processes in legume-supported crops
PhD project by Susannah Cass, Trinity College Dublin
This PhD project encompasses biodiversity sampling at 14 different field sites in 10 European countries, assessing the biodiversity of flora, ground invertebrates, earthworms and nematodes using an assortment of surveying and trapping techniques. The relationship between the diversity of these groups and key ecosystem services such as soil activity and natural enemy pest control will also be investigated. The relative impacts of various legume crops, management practices and organic systems will be considered.
Summary of the project, Word file 30kb: CassS_PhD
Contact: Susanna Cass casss@tcd.ie
First published on this site: 10 February 2012
Fabatropimed
Ecological services of legumes for nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical cycles and c sequestration in cereal cropping systems in Africa and the Mediterranean basin.
The target of Fabatropimed (December 2010 - March 2015) is to enhance the benefit of pulses for cereal growing systems and the environment, by (1) reducing the use of mineral-based fertilisers and increasing carbon-dioxide sequestration, and by (2) promoting the interaction between soil micro-organisms for plants to acquire and use nitrogen and phosphorus. Fabatropimed is carrying out cooperative research in six agro-ecosystems using agricultural and environmental diagnostics (WP1) together with a sustainability and innovation survey (WP5), in interdisciplinarity with monitoring the C, N and P soil cycles and the atmosphere (WP2). (From the project description - see web link below.)
Also listed under Projects/cropping_systems.
Summary of the project adapted from the Agropolis Fondation web page, Word file, 32 kb: Fabatropimed
Contact: DREVON Jean-Jacques, email - jean-jacques.drevon@supagro.inra.fr
Web link, in english: Agropolis Fondation web page
