The first year of the EARTHONE project has been defined by steady, methodical work aimed at creating a strong base for its long-term aims. Rather than rushing to results, the consortium has focused on understanding the conditions that shape land-use decisions in a changing climate, preparing the scientific, operational and technological structures that will sustain the project throughout its lifetime.
This foundation-building effort has involved scientific analyses, stakeholder engagement, legal and socio-economic studies, technological development and early pilot activities. The result is a coordinated system ready to support the start of field deployments and advanced modelling work in the second year.
Defining the groundwork for a complex system
For Silvia Uribe, the project coordinator at UPM, this initial phase required careful sequencing of interconnected tasks. As she explains, “During its first year, the EARTHONE project has focused on establishing the fundamental foundations upon which the entire system will be built.” The team dedicated significant time to better understanding how climate change and greenhouse gas emissions influence land management practices, consulting a diverse group of stakeholders to gather insights and identify challenges. These exchanges were conducted through three collaborative workshops in Greece, Italy and an online workshop bringing together land managers, scientists, public authorities and other actors whose decisions and knowledge will shape the project’s outcomes.
Silvia notes that this work has already provided direction: “the project has identified the main challenges and gaps, as well as valuable insights to guide both the development of project tools and the overall strategy moving forward.” Alongside stakeholder participation, the consortium examined the legal environment relevant to the project’s pilot areas and analysed the socio-economic factors that influence land-use choices, both of which will inform the design of EARTHONE’s tools and interventions.
From an operational perspective, the first year also served to establish the methodology for the project as a whole. The consortium defined procedures for each pilot site, agreed on the information that needs to be collected and settled on mechanisms to ensure consistent data gathering. On the technological side, the architecture that will support EARTHONE’s digital platform has been specified, and the teams dedicated to climate and environmental analysis have begun compiling key data sources and models. As Silvia adds, the project has also set in motion its dissemination strategy while initiating links with related initiatives to widen its reach.
Pilot sites begin to take shape
Pilot leaders have played an essential role in translating the project’s high-level plans into site-specific strategies. At UPM, Borja Arroyo reports that the team has advanced both its organisational and scientific preparations. “As pilot leaders with a mixed expertise in forestry and AI, we have sign an agreement with Tablas de Daimiel National Park authorities to establish the living lab. We have defined the area of interest, composed of several fields, and designed the location of the plots.” Alongside logistical work, the group has begun investigating carbon stocks in Iberian agroforestry systems, a topic central to understanding the mitigation potential of multifunctional landscapes.
Looking ahead, Borja stresses that “the main priority is the deployment of sensors and the start of the campaign of interventions and field and laboratory data collection.” He also underlines the importance of cooperation between the modelling teams and on-the-ground pilots, observing that the project must “bridge the gap between global modellers, mostly dealing with climate, and pilots managers.”
At the University of Thessaly, work has progressed in the project’s Greek pilot. The team explains that “We have successfully started the activities and experimentation setup in our pilot (Zoagora, Pilio, Greece). We organised a very successful workshop in Zagora in June 2025.” Their focus in the coming year rests on installing climate and soil sensors and ensuring that all planned pilot activities are fully executed on time.
Similarly, Oikon has been developing monitoring activities in Croatia, stating that the team has been “establishing monitoring of meadows and pastures in floodplain areas” and collecting the baseline data needed for future analyses. Their next steps involve the “establishment and calibration of the land use monitoring model included in the research.”
Strengthening the climatic and environmental framework
Climate modelling partners have spent the first year refining the technical and scientific tools that will later be applied to EARTHONE’s pilot regions. The University of Bremen reports that its team has been “compiling and testing climate model configurations, gathering essential input data, and establishing a collaborative framework with other partners.” Although some activities began later than planned, they emphasise that strong progress has been made in creating the required infrastructure.
For the second year, the group will concentrate on “initiating the climate modelling process, emphasizing regional downscaling and integrating phenological models.” They also note that the pilot studies must remain a priority for the whole consortium, as they “provide the backbone that ties everything together.”
The Cyprus Institute has been following a similar trajectory, advancing its regional climate modelling activities and preparing for additional monitoring work and developments in land-use and climate modelling over the next twelve months.
Building the digital backbone for EARTHONE
Technological development has been carried out by SATEC, whose tasks involve creating the platform that will host the project’s models, data streams and decision-support tools. Much of the first year has been devoted to the creation of a reliable technical environment. As the team reports, they have completed the deployment and configuration of the server infrastructure, which now operates as the central repository for project data.
They have also defined the platform’s working methodology and development approach, using standards based on Agile practices. Requirements have been gathered across the consortium and translated into the official system specification, submitted as Deliverable D2.3. On the technical side, the team has begun constructing the early architectural layers and, importantly, has implemented a full IoT data pipeline for the pilot sites.
Looking to the next phase, SATEC expects a shift from preparation to implementation. Their priorities include developing analytical modules, integrating machine-learning models and setting up connections with external data ecosystems. They will also open a validation phase involving demonstrations and feedback loops with stakeholders, ensuring the platform evolves in response to user needs.
Consortium coordination and strategic priorities for year two
While early work has been wide-ranging, partners converge on similar expectations for the second year. AGFT summarises this succinctly: “The main priority for EARTHONE in the coming year should be the official launch of the pilot activities across all sites. This will mark the start of the hands-on work where our methods, tools, and approaches are tested in real conditions.” They also note achievements such as the completion of the organisation of the workshops and the development of the project’s Exploitation Plan.
Across the consortium, the focus now moves towards field deployment, climate and land-use modelling, integration of platform components, and continual alignment between scientific teams and pilot managers. Ensuring coherence between these elements will be essential for the system’s capacity to provide reliable outputs on land-use decisions under climate pressures.
A year of preparation with a clear direction ahead
The structured and collaborative approach adopted during EARTHONE’s first year has created a coherent foundation upon which all future activities can grow. Partners have articulated clear needs for the next phase: deploying equipment, consolidating data collection, advancing modelling, strengthening the digital platform and maintaining tight coordination between scientific and operational teams.
With these elements in place, the second year will shift from preparation to active implementation. EARTHONE now enters a stage in which its concepts will be tested across Europe’s diverse landscapes, and the tools developed during the first year will begin to demonstrate their purpose.