A new study on the multiple land degradation processes present in the vast agrarian environments of Europe, carried out at the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest, has recently been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. The study was coordinated by professor Prăvălie Remus, PhD, teaching staff of the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest, who carried out the research at continental scale together with a team of researchers from Romania and abroad, affiliated to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and to prestigious universities in the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, China and Australia.
The scientific paper, title A unifying modelling of multiple land degradation pathways in Europe, simultaneously approaches 12 degradation processes that act along almost 2 million square kilometers of agrarian land in 40 countries of Europe. The study showed that approximately 10% of the agrarian fields studied are affected by at least 4-5 simultaneous degradation processes, a critical synergy for the productivity of agrarian fields, which has serious implications for food security and the economic prosperity of Europe. Continental research, whose geospatial results will be available on the ESDAC platform (European Soil Data Centre) of the European Commission, was realized within the international project Complex modelling of multiple land degradation processes in Europe. Towards an integrative scientific framework for sustainable land management across the continent, financed through Romania’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The published study generated immense interest at international level, already being accessed 20,000 times on the magazine’s website (in a period of approx. 2 months) and read/visualized by over 5 million users on the X platform (former Twitter). It is also remarkable that in June 2024, the paper was designated one of the 10 most consulted articles (in a similar time) in the magazine’s entire history, according to the information offered by the journal.