FORMULA
Agroforestry for sustainable multifunctional agriculture
FORMULA studies agroforestry systems and their Nature's Contributions to People (NCP).
Workpackages
FORMULA is structured in five subprojects and a coordinating project, investigating NCP indicators related to climate, freshwater supply, soil quality, biodiversity, habitat, and food and feed production. In addition to the individual research in the sub-projects, FORMULA includes three central experiments in which the sub-projects work closely together, such as transect sampling perpendicular to the tree line, a 15N-labelling trial on the competition of nitrogen between trees and plants, and high-resolution spatial data collection using drones and lidar for upscaling NCP indicators.
Abstract
The aim is to identify management options that optimise synergies and mitigate potential trade-offs arising from the incorporation of forestry elements into arable land. The project will investigate the supply and demand of NCPs in two successional agroforestry sites in Hesse and Brandenburg (Germany) with different production systems (organic vs. conventional) and environmental conditions.
The tree rows create in-field spatial gradients of environmental factors and form the basis for addressing two primary research objectives, i.e., to evaluate the performance of silvo-arable agroforestry systems and compare them with reference treeless farming systems; and to advance the mechanistic understanding of the processes underlying spatial patterns of regulating and material NCPs.
Link to project website
Team
Lutz Breuer, spokespersonSuzanne Jacobs,
Philipp Kraft
Project
2024 – 2028, DFG Research Unit 5664
Results
Dissemination
https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/fb09/forschung/zentrenundprojekte/agroforst/forschungsprojekte/formula
https://www.zalf.de/de/aktuelles/Seiten/PB2/Neue_-DFG-Forschungsgruppe_FORMULA.aspx