TUdi is conceived as a transformative project, integrating 15 academic and SME partners, to develop, upscale and disseminate soil restoring strategies in three major agricultural systems (cereal based rotations, tree crops and grasslands), different farm typologies and environmental conditions in Europe, China and New Zealand. Aimed to lead the way in improving soil health across EU, China and New Zealand, it rests on two pillars: 1) a network of 42 cooperating stakeholder organisations for defining, implementing and upscaling soil restoring strategies in multiple farms; b) a network of 66 long-term experiments and monitored farms in the participating countries. From them, TUdi will identify soil degradation situations, proven strategies for restoring soil health, and barriers and possibilities for its adoption at farm level, including gender dimensions. This bottom-up approach will develop a set of digital tools, compatible with platforms for optimizing CAP implementation in Europe, to predict the impact of these strategies on nutrient and water balance, yield, cost-benefit and farm operations. They will guide farmers in implementing strategies to restore soil health by overcoming barriers for adoption, with rigorous cost-benefit analyses central to farmer appraisal. Solutions will be scaled up over a large number of farms through partners engaged in the cooperators network, including training of stakeholders, developing technical materials and elaborating policy briefs. It will be complemented by communicating project challenges and results to society, raising awareness of the relevance of healthy soils for sustainable development. Providing a blueprint for development and dissemination of soil restoring strategies at large scale, it will contribute to key initiatives like the EU and China Research Agenda for Agriculture and EU Mission on Soil Heath and Food. Training farmers, staff and early career scientists in sustainable soil use will result in lasting legacy.

SHui is conceived as a network integrating long-term experiments of its 19 academic and SME partners across different environmental conditions and cropping systems in the EU and China. It provides a platform for research on soil-water resources management under water scarce conditions, to better understand the linkages between agricultural soil hydrology and sustainability and for a systematic assessment of adaptation and mitigation methods. It will develop and implement new strategies to increase water use efficiency and yield, based on sustainable intensification through integrated use of soil and water across different spatial scales. At farm level, this includes digital agriculture solutions integrating in situ and remote sensors and simulation models to exploit an improved understanding of the relationship between crop yield variability and soil hydraulic properties, optimizing circular approaches to re-use water and using waste water sources. These technical approaches are reliant on optimum data utilization and transdisciplinary research with multiple stakeholders. At regional scales, the aggregation of biophysical and socioeconomic variables in dynamic models will evaluate the impact of different policy strategies, to support decision makers to evaluate different scenarios of land-use dynamics, economic context and current and future climate in EU and China, including assessments of water and carbon footprint. SHui will exploit scientific, technological and social innovations by disseminating and communicating these to multiple stakeholders, and implementing novel technological packages from farm to large regional scales. It aims to make a significant contribution to the EU and China Research Agenda for Agriculture in providing food security and optimum use of scarce soil and water resources. Training a cohort of early career scientists in soil conservation and water-saving practices, SHui’s legacy will extend beyond the project duration.

Trees and forests are a proven nature-based solution that contribute to sustainable urban development. Their potential for delivering ecosystem services, enhancing biodiversity and contributing to the wellbeing of urban societies is often underestimated and underused. CLEARING HOUSE provides evidence and tools that facilitate mobilising the full potential of urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) for rehabilitating, reconnecting and restoring urban ecosystems. UF-NBS comprise every measure a city can take to address urban development challenges by deploying tree-based ecosystems. CLEARING HOUSE will review existing knowledge and will collect new data from large scale analyses (WP1), and evidence emerging from the comparative analysis of ten case studies in Europe and China (WP2), including a citizen science approach. Knowledge will relate to the social, economic and policy drivers of UF-NBS, their design and implementation, and their impacts on urban ecosystem and human wellbeing across continents. CLEARING HOUSE implements a co-design approach early in the project to ensure that its research programme exactly fits the demand of end-users, and engages stakeholders and scientists in problem-oriented knowledge generation through a set of targeted learning mechanisms (WP3). CLEARING HOUSE then develops user-targeted outputs to support cities, planners, business and civil society in implementing UF-NBS. Inter alia, decision support tools such as an online application, a global benchmarking tool and guidelines will provide knowledge on the design, governance and management of UF-NBS, and on sustainable business models relating to them (WP4). Target group specific communication and dissemination activities complement the project. These include Sino-European science-policy symposia (WP5) targeting senior decision-makers, activities targeting businesses and civil society organisations, and measures reaching out to citizens including school children (WP5).