Stakeholders workshop in Suining

August, 2016
Following the iSQAPER stakeholder meeting in Qiyang also a lot of activities were deployed in the Suining case study in Sichuan, China. Among others presentations were  organized for different stakeholders, questionaire trainings session were presented and a workshop was held with local government and farmers. The local government was also represented by the agriculture extension service centre. A lot of attention was paid to these activities given the different website news items: 

http://www.chinawestagr.com/homepage/showcontent.asp?id=25656

http://www.chinawestagr.com/tfs/showcontent.asp?id=25656

http://www.chinawestagr.com/tfs/showcontent.asp?id=25602


July, 2016
An iSQAPER stakeholder meeting was organized in Qiyang (China, case study 11). The workshop was about soil quality issues on a local scale. Around 40 people participated the workshop representing farmers, local government, agricultural extension service centre, researchers and students. The case study site leader is Prof. Minggang Xu from Institution of Agricultural Resources and Reginal Planning of CAAS. A Chinese news item about this meeting was published and can be found here:

Stakeholders workshop in Qiyang

2nd Plenary iSQAPER meeting from 19-23 June, 2016. Balatongyörök, Hungary

Project partners of the iSQAPER project met each other in Hungary to discuss the progress of their joint project. The Work Package leaders started with a preliminary meeting on Sunday the 19th June in order to get focussed on the red line of the project, to discuss the linkages of tasks within the work packages, and to think out the contribution of case study leaders. As from Monday 20th of June more than 50 partners attended the meeting.  The WP leaders conferred in small groups with case study partners to get an overview what was achieved in each case study. Afterwards the WP leaders gave their feedback and future plans. Furthermore time was spend on training sessions about soil quality assessments, the WOCAT technology questionnaires, and the Common Agricultural Policies. The meeting ended up with a field day. The meeting was well organized and hosted by our local iSQAPER partner the University of Pannonia (Brigitta Toth, Tamás Kismányoky). A photo impression is available over here and registered users can download the presentations here

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Soil4LIFE1New online education course Soil4Life: Sustainable Soil management. This course has recently been developed by Wageningen University, an iSQAPER project partner. According to the relevant websites the intro starts with:

What are we without soils? Learn the basics about the importance of soils, what’s threatening them and how we can protect and sustain this precious resource.

Soil is the earth’s fragile skin that anchors all life. We depend on soil to build our homes and cities, to grow crops for food and raise livestock, to support transportation and enable recreation. Yet we disregard this crucial and precious resource that lies right under our feet.

You can find out more here and enroll can be done here

Photo4

Xiaomei Yang, member of the iSQAPER management team, was honoured by the China Scholarship Council. She received the 2015 Chinese Government Award for outstanding Self-financed Chinese Students Abroad. This award was founded by the Chinese government with the purpose of rewarding the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas. Only those with outstanding performance in their PhD studies will be considered by the award selection panel.

Xiaomei defend her PhD-thesis on the 9th of May in Wageningen, The Netherlands. Her thesis is entitled: "Pesticide use and off-site risk assessment: a case study of glyphosate fate in Chinese Loess soil"

On the photo she receives the award from Mr. Xu Chen, Embassor of China in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

 

iSQAPER is logo

 As you may already have noticed, the information system about the iSQAPER project has gone online (http://www.isqaper-is.eu/).The appearance is similar to, but not the same as, the iSQAPER-project site. The main sections and headings are based on the headings used in the project leaflet. The next stage will be to start adding content which will come from the project deliverables, when they are ready. The website can be accessed by clicking on the logo to be found in the right margin .
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