The University of Plymouth is part of a major new research project designed to steer the UK towards its net zero targets while benefitting soil health, biodiversity and revolutionising agricultural practices.
OpenLAND is a three-year project supported by £4million funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and government partners, through the Land Use for Net Zero, Nature and People (LUNZ) programme.
It aims to provide decision makers with the insights they need to put the UK on a path to deliver net zero emissions by 2050, while also delivering climate resilient soil, food security, and biodiversity net-gain.
Through a series of initiatives, the project team will identify intervention scenarios for land uses that exploit synergies between climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity.
They will create a validated, UK-wide, spatially explicit integrated modelling framework, called OpenLAND, to evaluate potential net zero pathways.
The project will extend the capability of the OpenCLIM modelling framework, developed with previous UKRI funding, by ground-truthing soil carbon and soil health using empirical data and by developing and trialling robotic monitoring for measuring and verifying soil carbon and health.
In Plymouth, the project team includes Professor of Catchment Science
Professor Will Blake, Senior Research Fellow
Dr Claire Kelly, and Associate Professor in Ecological Genetics
Dr Jennifer Rowntree.
Building on the University's expertise in soil science and sensor technologies, they will work on ways of using autonomous platforms to evaluate soil health while also speaking to farmers and land managers to gauge their opinions on such innovations.
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