Mapping of promising areas for the upscaling of NATAE findings

D1.2 deliverable - Working Package 1. This document is the result of task T1.3 “Identifying criteria and potential areas for scaling-up and extrapolation” of the NATAE project (“North African Transition to Agro-Ecology”) and its purpose is to identify potential areas within the countries hosting the Living Labs (Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) where the future NATAE optimal agro-ecological practices (AEP) combinations could be disseminated. Therefore, the outputs contained here can be capitalised by WP5 (Networking, Capitalisation and Dissemination) as well as WP7 (Education and extension). The work undertaken primarily revolves around the latest version (v4) of FAO's Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) methodology. It is used to evaluate land in its capacity to support sustainable agricultural development by assessing natural resources, while considering limiting factors such as crop eco-physiological characteristics, climatic and edaphic requirements of crops. Based on the major crops identified by the respective LLs in each country through activities in the framework of WP4, the GAEZ methodology was applied to identify areas of similar characteristics, suitable for the cultivation of those crops, where the AEP combinations emerging from the NATAE project, could be disseminated. The results presented in this report are based on the use of freely available data regarding crop requirements and soil characteristics, in conjunction with any data that could be extracted from the LLs at this stage. It is anticipated that in the following months, as the results of the surveys from the LLs become available, the more accurate data will allow for improvement of the current results.