The overarching goal of this research project is to develop and apply innovative methodologies to increase the social-ecological water use efficiency of managed ecosystems along the Mediterranean biome and climate types. We will focus on a diverse set of seasonally dry ecosystems, spanning a large gradient of mean annual rainfall (from 35 to 780 mm/y) across the Mediterranean biome. Case studies will examine the Mediterranean Sea basin from west to east providing the exceptional opportunity to develop, identify and compare water resources management and planning strategies for contrasting climate conditions in the Mediterranean region. We will define innovative strategies for the water sustainability in the Mediterranean region under current and future climate change scenarios, optimizing water infrastructure (e.g., reservoirs, wells network design) and water uses (irrigation, animal production systems, drinking and industrial activities). Strategies will be defined with stakeholders and government authorities, which will be actively involved in the project. To improve predictive technical tools for water resources assessment, we propose to develop innovative methodologies and techniques to better estimate evapotranspiration, the main parameter of the water budget in semi-arid and arid climates. To do so we propose 1) to combine the use of eddy covariance and tree sapflow observations, 2) advanced technical tools (remote sensing observations) will be developed to monitor the main state variables explaining energy and water balance at the land surface, and to include those observations in data assimilation systems to predict watershed hydrological cycles. The analysis of climate and land use scenarios will provide the inputs for the water resources management and planning to optimally use both surface water and groundwater. We will establish a transnational Mediterranean river monitoring network for sharing knowledge and data. Field sites and watershed case studies will be in Sardinia (Italy), Catalonia (Spain), south-west France, Cyprus, Egypt and Tunisia. The monitoring activity will be both at the field and basin scales. The case studies cover a wide range of spatial scales, climate and ecosystems, both natural and managed providing an extraordinary opportunity of knowledge development and international exchange along the Mediterranean biome and climate types.

MASCC aims to address mitigation and adaptation strategies to global change by assessing current and future evolution of Mediterranean agricultural soil vulnerability to erosion in relation to projected land use, agricultural practices and climate change. It targets to i) assess the similarities/dissimilarities in dominant factors affecting the current Mediterranean agricultural soil vulnerability by exploring a wide range of Mediterranean contexts; ii) improve the ability to evaluate the impact of extreme events on both the current and projected agricultural soil vulnerability and the sediment delivery at catchment outlet; iii) provide benchmarks regarding the vulnerability of agricultural production to a combination of potential changes in a wide range of Mediterranean contexts, iv) and provide guidelines on sustainable agricultural conservation strategies adapted to each specific agro-ecosystem taking into consideration both on- and off-site erosion effects and socio-economics issues. To reach these objectives, the MASCC project will gather researchers from 6 Mediterraneanean countries (France, Morocco, Tunisia ; Italy, Spain, Portugal) that monitor mid- to long-term environmental catchment and that get mutual knowledge due to previous projects and network. The major advantages for the project are: i) the availability of an unrivalled database on soil erosion, (innovative) agriculture practices covering a wide range of Mediterranean contexts, ii) the capacity to better evaluate the impact of extreme events on soil erosion, iii) the availability of the LANDSOIL , a catchment-scale integrated approach of the soil-landscape system that enables to simulate both the sediment fluxes at the catchment outlet and the soil evolution properties, iv) the multi-disciplinarity of the involved researchers with an international reputation in the fields of soil science, modelling changes in soil properties, erosion and sediment transport, agronomy and socio-economy. The MASCC project will be conducted through a coordination and dissemination workpackage and three scientific work-packages : WP1 will consist in elaborating plausible scenario (climatic, land use and adaptative innovative agricultural practices) for the future (20 to 50 years); WP2 will simulate soil vulnerability for current conditions and scenarios from WP1; and WP3 will focus on the comparative evaluation of present and future on-site and off-site effects of soil erosion on agriculture sustainability.

The ALTOS project aims to improve water management models for rainfed and irrigated agriculture, by considering the modulation of spatial structures and connectivities induced by hydro-agricultural infrastructures and practices (e.g., modulating regional land use to drive upstream / downstream water repartition). Four study sites are considered for integrated analysis in Morocco, Lebanon and Tunisia; and two study sites are considered for methodological developments in Spain and Italy. WP1 deals with monitoring and modelling tools for characterizing spatial structures. It includes the use of innovative sensors for structure observations, and of innovative methods for data processing. WP2 addresses innovative monitoring tools for characterizing processes induced by spatial structures (.e.g, water flows). It includes several protocols relying on complementary measurements. WP3 addresses innovative modelling for simulating individual (e.g., evapotranspiration) and combined (e.g., hydrological cycle) processes. It includes multi-objectives / multi-criteria calibration procedures relying on distributed / nested measurements. WP4 simulates matter fluxes and storages for possible structure modulations, to next conduct an integrated analysis with end-users on the basis of participative seminars. It also cross-analyses irrigated and rainfed agrosystems, by addressing vulnerabilities and adaptation margins. WP5 deals with (1) the sharing of data and methods within the ALTOS consortium, and (2) the results dissemination and exploitation. For this latter item, we rely on long-term collaborations with several stakeholders (farmer associations, resource managers, engineering offices). Expected outcomes are related to SDG #2 (sustainable agriculture), #6 (water supply services), and #12 (responsible consumption and production). ALTOS contributes to PRIMA outcome indicators, including (1) newly modelling routines, (2) new irrigation technologies, and (3) innovative farming system.

Mediterranean Rainfed Agrosystems (MRAs) provide various environmental and economic services of importance such as food production, preservation of employment and local knowhow, downstream water delivery or mitigation of rural exodus. These services have progression margins, thus making investments in such agrosystems highly profitable. In the meantime, expected climate change combined with demography and market pressures threaten MRA future abilities to satisfy the aforementioned services. In the context of mitigating the pressures induced by global change, ALMIRA aims to explore the modulation of landscape mosaics within MRAs to optimize landscape services. Following recommendations from think-tank IAASTD (2008), significant advances are expected by reasoning spatial organizations of land uses and cropping systems. ALMIRA proposes a threefold conceptualization of landscape mosaics as i) networks of natural and anthropogenic elements that result from biophysical and socio-economic processes within a resource governance catchment, ii) structures that impact landscape fluxes from the agricultural field to the catchment extent, with consequences on the resulting functions and services, and iii) a possible lever for managing agricultural catchments by compromising on agricultural production and on preservation of soil and water resources. To explore this new lever, ALMIRA proposes to design, implement and test a new Integrated Assessment Modelling approach that explicitly i) includes innovations and action means into prospective scenarii for landscape evolutions, and ii) addresses landscape mosaics and processes of interest from the agricultural field to the resource governance catchment. This requires tackling methodological challenges in relation to i) the design of spatially explicit landscape evolution scenarii, ii) the coupling of biophysical processes related to agricultural catchment hydrology, iii) the digital mapping of landscape properties and iv) the economic assessment of the landscape services. The new Integrated Assessment Modelling approach is implemented and tested within three catchments located in France, Morocco and Tunisia. Beyond the obtaining of significant advances in the aforementioned methodological domains, and the understanding of landscape functioning and services for the considered catchments, outcomes are expected to help in revisiting former recommendations at the levels of agricultural field and resource governance catchment, and in identifying new levers that improve MRA management at the intermediate level of landscape mosaics. ALMIRA gathers French, Moroccan and Tunisian researchers involved in a large range of scientific disciplines: hydrology, physical geography, climatology, pedology, remote sensing, spatial statistics, agronomy, agro-economy, sociology, agricultural and environmental economy. One of the major challenges of the project is to make all these disciplines converging towards a reproducible transdisciplinary approach.

Irrigation performance in the Mediterranean region is below expectations and well below its technological potential. Modernization of irrigation followed a top-down approach not always adapted to the needs and capacities of farmers. This proposal claims that bridging the actual irrigation performance gap requires inverting the process to a bottom-up interdisciplinary approach, in an open innovation environment making intensive use of emerging technologies. The HubIS consortium integrates 13 partners complementing each other in expertise, training and education tasks, and research vs. extension priorities. The objective of the consortium is to narrow the irrigation performance gap and to improve sustainability of irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean region, by favouring the emergence and adoption of co-innovations at multiple scales (farm to basin or aquifer scale). The project will adopt a participatory action research strategy by implementing a Mediterranean irrigation innovation hub that will link site-specific hubs located in representative irrigated agroecosystems. Each site-hub will have a Fab-Lab targeting specific innovations according to the priorities of the corresponding agrosystems. The type of innovations considered in the project range from a novel framework for upscaling irrigation efficiency to advanced open and web-based methods using low-cost spatially distributed information (remote sensing, ground sensors) for site-specific management and automatic operation. Innovations are also expected on application equipment and cropping systems. Environmental conservation will be addressed by developing control systems of return flow quality, and optimization of irrigation and crop management. This project ambitions to halve the current irrigation performance gap, in terms of both average performance and performance variability, and to reduce water abstraction, agrochemical pollution and C emission below sustainable thresholds.