The University of Aveiro hosted, from 15 to 18 July 2026, the 8th edition of the Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration (EMCEI), held in hybrid format. The conference brought together researchers from different areas of Earth and environmental sciences to discuss environmental challenges facing the Euro-Mediterranean region and solutions for more sustainable resource management.
Local organisation was coordinated by João Miguel Dias, director of the Department of Physics at the University of Aveiro and a CESAM researcher, who served as chair of the local organising committee. The committee also included Américo Ribeiro, Ana Picado, Carina Lopes, Humberto Pereira, Magda Sousa and Nuno Vaz, members of CESAM and of the Department of Physics. Ângela Cunha, associate professor with habilitation at the Department of Biology of the University of Aveiro and a CESAM researcher, took part as a plenary speaker.
In her plenary talk, Ângela Cunha addressed the principal pressures on Mediterranean agriculture and perennial systems, such as olive groves, exposed to drought, soil salinisation, loss of organic matter and thermal extremes.
The researcher examined the potential of microbiome-based biological solutions, exploring how interactions between plants and rhizosphere microbial communities can enhance crop resilience and productivity without excessive reliance on agrochemicals. She noted, however, that scaling up such interventions depends on factors including the selection of microbial communities driven by plant genotype and the adaptation of microbial consortia to edaphoclimatic stress conditions. The remaining plenary talks addressed recycled substrates for urban green infrastructure, distributed environmental monitoring systems, and applications of photocatalysis in water treatment and sustainable energy production.
CESAM’s involvement in the organisation and scientific programme of the conference highlights its contribution to Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and to knowledge-sharing across different fields of environmental science.
The 2026 edition was further marked by the recognition, with the Best Paper Award (Junior Category), of the study “Bibliometric Synthesis of Machine Learning Applications for Soil Threat Assessment: Mapping Trends, Gaps, and Future Pathways”, authored by Lemerson Brasileiro, Ana Isabel Machado and Sónia Morais Rodrigues, developed within the CURIOSOIL project (Horizon Europe/EU Soil Mission). Through a bibliometric synthesis on the application of Machine Learning to soil threat monitoring, the authors identified trends, gaps and challenges aligned with the recent European Soil Monitoring Law.
Further information at: https://2026.emcei.net/index.php
