OT-Med resesarch activity covered 5 main areas:
3 main work packages (WP) and 2 transversal ones (TWP) focusing both on short- and long-term time scales.
WP1 CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND NATURAL HAZARDS
WP1 focused on studying climatic and anthropogenic changes and natural hazards,including:
- sea: thermohaline circulation, mesoscale processes, air-sea interactions, impact of contaminations on the sea,
- aquifers, Lake Chad, catchment areas: evolution, salinisation, water resources
- forest ecosystems: climate-fire-management interactions,
- long time-scales: paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, paleoseismology, archeology,
- morphogenesis, seismic risk, coastline changes, landslides.
WP1 Leaders: Lucilla Benedetti (CEREGE), France Van Wambeke (MIO)
WP2 : IMPACT OF CLIMATE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE
WP2 focuses on studying the impact of climate and socio-economic changes on ecosystems with a focus on the ecosystem services, in particular related to :
- biodiversity: databases, conservation, management, services, evolution,
- soils: impacts of land use and climate, quality indicators, modelling, management,
- agriculture and forestry: modelling and scenarios,
- marine ecosystems: functioning, resources, trophic webs, artificial reefs, marine protected areas.
WP2 Leaders: Wolfgang Cramer (IMBE), A. Ereskovsky (IMBE)
WP3. Human-environmental interaction: perception, adaptation and mitigation
WP3 focuses on studying human-environment interactions, looking at the perception of hazards, adaptation and mitigation, including
- modelling decision making in the context of risks,
- co-evolution of climate and societies, adaptation to climate change,
- comparison of international gouvernance regimes for climate and biodiversity,
- improved management of ecosystems for conservation and sustainable delivery of ecosystems
WP3 Leaders: Olivier Chanel (ex GREQAM now AMSE), Sylvie Thoron (ex GREQAM)
TWP1. The observation systems and databases
TWP1 focuses on coordinating existing observation systems in relation with modelling (TWP2):
- Marine Observation Services
- Human-Environment Observatory Bassin Minier de Provence
- Oak Observatory in Observatoire de Haute Provence (O3HP)
- The Chad Observatory
- Climed Observatory
TWP1 Leaders: Thomas Curt (ex IRSTEA now INRAE), Hubert Mazurek (LPED)
TWP2. Toward an integrated modelling of the Mediterranean systems
TWP2 focuses on developing integrated model for the Mediterranean based on several major coupled components:
- Complex general circulation models (GCM) (ex. IPSL and intermediate complexity models to make joint climate simulations ex. LOVECLIM)
- Downscaling using statistical models and meso-scale models (collaborations with labex L-IPSL)
- Ecosystem models to simulate the natural vegetation and water budget at the scale of the catchment basin: LPJ-GUESS, LPJmL
- Agro-ecosystem model LPJ-managed Lands (LPJmL) Collaboration will be also developed with the LABEX BACS around the model IPSL-ORCHIDEE.
- Marine model, OT-Med partners are developing their own codes for 3D physical-biogeochemical coupled models, coupled to hydrodynamical models developed in by other collaborating institutes (e.g. Eco3M).
- Modelling of societal behaviour in the face of changing climate will be based on multi-agent socio-economic models.
TWP2 Leaders: Alberte Bondeau (IMBE), Melika Baklouti (MIO)