New SoWa projects for 2020-2023

For the years 2020 – 2023, SoWa Research Infrastructure achieved excellent results in EIG CONCERT-Japan competition and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic competition (TA CR).

Soil Eco-Technology to Recover Water Storage in disturbed Forests

EIG CONCERT-Japan announced the five successful projects for the 6th call “Smart Water Management for Sustainable Society”.

It also includes the project “Soil Eco-Technology to Recover Water Storage in Disturbed Forests” – Led by Professor Jan Frouz (Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) and including Dr. Kazumichi Fuji (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan), Dr. Werner Gerwin (Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany) and Dr. Peter Surda (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia).

Main objective and scientific output of this project will be the formulation of indicators for the ability of soils to store water harmonized and shared between European and Japanese researchers; more thorough understanding of the relationship between basic tree properties (leaf traits) and soil water retention and how they are influenced by other soil properties (pH, clay contents); set up practical guidelines how to improve water storage in disturbed forest soils.

Soil protection standard for retail supply chains

The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR) announced the results of the third public tender of the Program for the Support of Applied Social Sciences and Humanities Research, Experimental Development and Innovation of ETA, announced on 18 September 2019.

The project “Soil protection standard for retail supply chainsů is led by Mgr. Vojtěch Kotecký Ph.D. (Charles University) and partners are Biology Centre CAS and Czech Confederation of Commerce and Tourism. Solver from the Biology centre CAS (RI SoWa) is Professor Jan Frouz.

Thanks to this project applicants will develop and test a set of practical standards that ensure soil protection and are adapted to the operational routine of retail supply chains. Therefore, they will achieve two goals:

• – Develop a set of recommended soil protection standards that retail sector can introduce into their relationships its suppliers.
• – Test the set in the application reality of individual retail companies.

To achieve these goals, the project applies social science knowledge of corporate supply chain sustainability, its principles, procedures and mechanisms, in order to solve the technical problem of soil protection in farmland. Therefore, the research team combines industry experts and academic researchers with expertise in theory and practice of corporate sustainability manageme.