International project to aid sustainable rice development
The new €7.5 million project, called LEGATO (Land-use intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems) aims to advance the long-term sustainable development of irrigated rice fields, against risks arising from multiple aspects of global change.
The consortium of institutions from Germany, Malaysia, Vietnam, The Philippines, UK, Bulgaria and Spain will be co-ordinated by Josef Settele of the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany, and will run from 2011 until 2016.
Settele will lead a team of more than 60 ecologists, social scientists, engineers, and agronomists, who plan to quantify the dependence of ecosystem functions and the services they generate in agricultural systems in three countries in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Vietnam and The Philippines.
