The Europe-LAND project is proud to highlight an exciting opportunity for researchers working at the intersection of agriculture, land use, biodiversity, and climate policy: a Special Issue in Journal of Land Use Science focused on “Leveraging agricultural data from the EU’s Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) for research and policy“
Open for manuscript submissions until 31 March 2026 invites original research that utilizes IACS data to:
- Assess the opportunities and limitations of IACS data to provide guidance for data users and advocate for the release of more comprehensive and higher-quality datasets by national administrations.
- Analyze farmers’ land management decisions, particularly regarding crop diversity and crop rotation patterns at the European scale to evaluate their impacts on biodiversity, soil health, farm livelihoods, and climate resilience.
- Develop farm typologies to classify farms based on their structure, uptake of agri-environmental measures, and socio-economic characteristics to facilitate policy targeting and regulatory interventions.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of current agricultural policies a tailoring future policies to specific farming systems by leveraging IACS data to address regional and farm-level needs, thereby improving policy effectiveness and sustainability outcomes.
- Examine factors influencing the adoption of agri-environmental measures and identifying barriers to their implementation, focusing on promoting practices aligned with EU priorities such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, nature restoration, and soil health strategies.
- Integrate IACS data with other datasets, such as for agricultural productivity, farm accountancy, farm surveys, or environmental indicators, or using IACS as reference data for other applications, such as remote sensing of agricultural systems.
- Improve open data and science practices, including harmonization procedures for IACS data across Member States, adhering to open science principles, and fostering collaboration across disciplines.
By drawing on increasingly accessible, high-resolution spatial and statistical agricultural data, this issue aims to provide a roadmap for leveraging IACS data to support sustainable agricultural transitions and inform policy at multiple scales across the EU.
Meet the Guest Editors
We are especially pleased to see several members of the Europe-LAND consortium leading this initiative:
- Tomáš Václavík – Palacký University Olomouc (Czech Republic)
- Heidi Leonhardt – BOKU University (Austria)
- Daniel Müller – Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) (Germany)
- Martin Rudbeck Jepsen – University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
- Martin Claverie – Joint Research Centre, European Commission
- Sebastian Klimek – Thünen Institute of Biodiversity (Germany)
- Silke Hüttel – University of Göttingen (Germany)
The guest editors of this focus issue convened as part of the IACS Data Community of Practice, recently established under the Horizon Europe project, Europe-LAND (www.europe-land.eu). The community seeks to connect researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners to foster exchange, share insights, and collaborate on innovative research related to IACS and other agricultural land-use data. Interested experts are welcome to join the community anytime: https://europe-land.eu/iacs-data-community-of-practice/.
Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2026, read the full Call for Papers.