Gestão dos serviços de ecossistema no olival utilizando modelos espaciais avançados

Olive growing has been facing major constrains due to intensification, resulting in an increase of the use of pesticides and fertilizers and, consequently in the degradation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity and landscape values. This has created an urgent need to develop models for managing complex agroecosystems that integrate factors affecting food quality, sustainability and biodiversity and provide a supporting technique to understand the consequences of agricultural management for ecosystem services. Thus, the main objective of this project will be to develop an advanced based-agent simulation (ABS) that could be used to preview/evaluate the effects of farming practices on key ecosystem services, such as biological control of pests. Agent-based simulation (ABS) is a modelling technique used to model complex systems composed of interacting, autonomous agents that have been very useful for supporting farmers in crop management decisions. In ABS, agents represent animals (predaceous arthropods, in our proposal) acting in their environment. In this project, we will develop an ABS for the olive grove based on an ABS system developed in Denmark (ALMaSS) that is capable of including highly detailed farm management and spatial structures. In fact, until now, there are no similar simulations for southern European permanent crop systems, and the linking of all these components into one system?s simulation would be a crucial contribution for this area. Development of this tool will follow a modelling cycle and will start with collection of data from the landscape in an area (20 km x 20 km) dominated by the olive tree (Activity 1). Arthropod representations will be obtained in Activity 2. Based on previous results obtained by this team, five species representing soil organisms and canopy were selected. A conceptual model will be developed for each species including different biological, ecological, behavioural and toxicological factors that can influence their abundance in the olive grove. The development of the computer model itself will be carried out in C++, using the ALMaSS framework, in Activity 3. Data obtained in Activities 1 and 2 will be taken and translated into, respectively, the landscape component and the arthropod component and will be combined in the final system simulation. In Activity 4, the model will be tested with real observed data collected from selected study sites located in the area described in Activity 1. Since stakeholder engagement is a vital component for implementing a tool of this type, in Activity 5, several meetings enrolling their representatives will take place in order to evaluate viability and usefulness of the tool in decision making. This project comprise a multidisciplinary experienced team involving agronomists, entomologists, ecologists, chemical engineers and modellers from Portugal (IPSetúbal, IPBragança and UCoimbra) and Denmark (UAarhus).