Claas Nendel

Claas Nendel is co-head of the ZALF Research Area „ Simulation and Data Science“, in which he also leads the working group on „Landscape Modelling“. A studied geo-ecologist (Braunschweig, Germany; Ås, Norway), he received his PhD from Braunschweig in 2002 and qualified for lecturer (Habilitation) at Berlin University of Technology in 2014. Since 2020 he is jointly appointed professor with the University of Potsdam. With more than 25 years in agricultural research, Prof. Nendel has specialised in integrated modelling of water, nitrogen, and carbon dynamics, crop growth, and farm economics. His primary focus is on the carry-over effects within crop rotations and their implications for yields, emissions and soil health, also across large areas with remote sensing data as input. Prof. Nendel has served as the President of the European Society for Agronomy and as chairman of the German Soil Science Society plant nutrition section and currently chairs the Climate Change platform within the German Agricultural Research Alliance and leads various modelling activities in international networks, including AgMIP and ISMC. He is furthermore affiliated with the Global Change Research Institute in Brno, Czechia.

He is going to make a presentation titled "How does climate action look like on fields, and how do we know that it matters?".

In order to feed the world sustainably, we need to constantly review the technologies and concepts we use to produce food and how we can exploit the potential to further increase nutrient and water use efficiency and reduce pesticide use to protect the environment and climate. The political framework for these efforts has already been established, but further measures are needed to meet new challenges. Policymakers are increasingly relying on scientific findings, with experiments, theories and simulations forming an important interface. Experiments provide empirical evidence, theories offer conceptual understanding, and simulations enable predictions and scenario testing, which together enable informed decision-making. Simulation models are powerful tools that help us understand complex agricultural and environmental systems, but they still have limitations when it comes to capturing all the complexities of the real world. Therefore, experiments on various scales remain essential, complemented by continuous environmental monitoring using satellites and other large-scale measurement systems to track changes and impacts worldwide. This lecture begins with global challenges, but then gradually breaks them down to the field scale in order to highlight the challenges of observation and their significance for modelling concepts. It discusses how both methods can provide meaningful information for political decisions and how research on a field and landscape scale can contribute to a balanced joint design of climate-related measures. The lecture reflects on the role of scientists in this context and concludes with a call for objective, evidence-based findings for sound policy and the question of how we can further promote social awareness and urgency without undermining the integrity of science.