The LandSupport platform to help land managers in the mitigation of degradation of natural resources

This work presents the LandSupport platform, a state-of-art, open-source, web-based geoSpatial Decision Support System (DSS). In the wide panorama of DSSs, LandSupport represents a unique instrument in support of sustainable agriculture and forestry, evaluating the potential trade-off between different land uses, at multiple different spatial scales (European, national, regional and local). Within LandSupport DSS, more than 100 tools are freely available to multiple end-users, in a wide range of areas, such as ecoturism, land degradation, viticulture and more. The development, testing and engagement phases of each tool required an active involvement of different types of users, since the multi-sectoral and multi-scale nature of the project. Several general and face-to-face meetings aiming at defining goals and objectives, targeted hands-on sessions and training were organized to establish direct links between stakeholders, end-users and developers. The present works gives details about the infrastructure (databases, core models and dashboard) and about the end-users engagement. Eventually, an example of tool usage is given, for the evaluation of the productions of different crops, nitrate leaching and SOC-change, considering specific, user-defined, pedological conditions.