The resilience of Mediterranean agricultural and forestry systems against climate change and land degradation requires a sound understanding and implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs). Agroforestry and Silvopastoral systems may play a key role in ecological balance and preservation of natural resources, supporting biodiversity, providing ecosystem services, and acting as a natural carbon sink, besides sustaining important multi-purpose functions for the rural population. Monitoring (e.g., eddy covariance, ET and sap flow measurements, soil water content, agrometeorological stations) and assessment tools are important to evaluate the effectiveness and resilience of these solutions, including field experiments (to better characterize agroforestry and land models, represent interlinkages between trees and crops, physiological processes, resilience to climate change, productivity, and other ES as functions of environmental drivers, vegetation structure, management, and climate change) and remote sensing. Such assessment will support best practices for promoting and fostering ecosystem services, land fertility and productivity, water availability, biodiversity levels, and resilience to climate change, from both ecological and economic standpoints.

The candidate should demonstrate skills in agriculture and forest science, environmental engineering, informatics, machine learning, AI, plant and ecosystem monitoring techniques, and modeling. They should also be capable of managing databases and files from different sources and have an interest in artificial intelligence methods.

The PhD student will be based at the University of Sassari, the Laboratory of Agrometeorology and Ecophysiology. The laboratory consists of a team of experts, including specialists in agriculture and forest systems, ecophysiologists, agrometeorologists, and experts in climate change impact and risk assessment. Our team is comprised of experienced senior scientists and young researchers, postdocs, and PhD students, along with researchers from UNISS and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Foundation (CMCC). All resources for field experiments and calculations will be provided. The student will collaborate with external teams involved in ongoing projects at UNISS and CMCC.