To combat climate change and nitrogen eutrophication, we need to understand how the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is affected by interactions between land use, climate and biodiversity. In Limburg, Flanders and beyond, the agricultural and horticultural sector and related companies can and want to significantly reduce their impact on the environment (climate change mitigation) or adapt their methods and products to changing circumstances (climate change adaptation). This requires on the one hand research at the interface between ecology and agriculture, with targeted, well replicated, long-term, but on the other hand also rapid research experiments, in which the climate is manipulated on a very realistic scale and we make integrated assessments of the responses of ecosystems to climate and other environmental changes. Hasselt University is already supporting the agricultural industry with these challenges by using the state-of-the-art research infrastructure ‘Ecotron Long Term Research Units (LTRU)’. The Ecotron is digitally connected to the ‘Belgian Integrated Carbon Observation System’ (ICOS), a European research infrastructure for long-term observation of greenhouse gases over Europe. However, the Ecotron LTRU in its current configuration is explicitly designed for long-term research and is best suited to answer fundamental scientific questions: testing new biological techniques to reduce the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, assessing crop varieties for tolerance to climate extremes such as drought; testing of biotechnological products, such as (bio-)fertilisers and (bio-)pesticides. Complementary to this LTRU, this project therefore aims to purchase Rapid Assessment Units (RAU) infrastructure to answer urgent questions about adaptation and management techniques in the context of changing climate and environmental conditions, which require targeted, well replicated short-term experiments. The Ecotron RAU will ultimately consist of 8 climate-independent experimental chambers where (agricultural) ecosystem units can be subjected to experimental treatments of several weeks to several months representing environmental changes such as nitrogen deposition, climate change, application of soil improvers, land use change, with the aim of extensively testing the ecosystem's response (including biodiversity, soil health, carbon, nutrient and water balance) to the experimental treatment. In addition, and not least, this project and its potential partners want to create a Limburg Sustainable Agriculture Ecosystem in which the questions and/or opportunities that lie ahead for Limburg, regional and international agriculture and horticulture are inventoried and tested against the extent to which they contribute to adapting or dealing with environmental changes in the agriculture and nature sector.