PRESELECTED PROJECTS
PROJECT 1
Spatial and temporal adaptations of a traditional Mediterranean fishery facing Regional Change: combining history and ecology to study past, present and future of sponge harvesting
Proposed coordinators: Thierry Pérez (IMBE), Daniel Faget (TELEMME)
Labex OT-Med - WP2 and WP3
Sponge fishing is a Mediterranean traditional activity that suffered numerous upheavals during the last three centuries. Since the beginning of the XXth century, sponge harvesting has dramatically declined. Sponge fishermen have continuously adapted to technical and socio-economic changes, to geopolitical and climate instability, while their resources have dramatically decreased. Lately, there has been a regain of commercial interest for natural sponges with new markets.
We propose an interdisciplinary study (ecological, historical and sociological approaches) of the past and actual patterns of sponge harvesting, to understand the adaptation and resilience capabilities of the populations and propose sustainable management approaches in the actual Mediterranean context.
PROJECT 2
Building an urban biodiversity index to follow global biodiversity change in urbanized area: a support for management and long term surveys
Proposed coordinators: Magali Deschamps-Cottin (LPED) and Bruno VILA (IMBE)
Labex OT-Med - WP2
Evaluating the status and trends of biodiversity in an urban area requires the use of relevant ecological indicators. The development of such indicators implies multitaxa systematic monitoring in order to provide accurate information on global biodiversity change. The Laboratoire Population Environnement Développement (LPED), which studies the composition, organization and biotic homogenization of species assemblages in urbanized areas of Marseille with various models (butterflies, birds and plants), has already collected such observations, formalized under the Observatoire Pluridisciplinaire de l'Environnement Urbain (OPEU). In this project, we propose to make use of these ecological observations gathered in the OPEU database to build an indicator of urban biodiversity. The goal is to develop a tool for the detection of short-, medium- or long-term evolution of the biodiversity in order to better understand biodiversity structuration and the functioning of the urban ecosystem, and to provide a support for sustainable management.
PROJECT 3
Do we live on polluted coasts ?
Proposed coordinator: Olivier Radakovitch (CEREGE)
Labex OT-Med - WP1, WP2
The Mediterranean Sea is sometimes reported as one of the most polluted sea in the world. This cliché is based on some real facts, principally the importance of human activities inducing fluxes of various contaminants (maritime traffic, coastal population, industrial history), and the « closed » status of this sea, limiting the possibility of dilution. But looking more precisely, the evidence of impacts of inorganic or organic chemical contaminants on the ecosystem or human health are relatively scarce. They are generally constrained to hotspot areas along the coasts, and the processes of transfer through the trophic chain as well as the consequences onto ecosystem health are poorly, if not, understood.
If it is clear that Mediterranean Sea was and could be affected by chemical contaminants, studies are still necessary to precise their pathways and impacts onto the various types of ecosystems. As a first step, a compilation of case studies including a large range of informations like for example contamination status, observed impacts, public perceptions and remediation solutions should be initiated within the framework of OT-Med Labex.
PROJECT 4
Response of Mediterranean mineralising plankton community structures and ballasting effect to climate forcing.
Proposed coordinators: Virginie Riou (MIO); Luc Beaufort (CEREGE)
Other people involved: Christian Tamburini, Karine Le Blanc, Stéphanie Jacquet, Elvira Pulido-Villena, Christos Panagiotopoulos (MIO); Kazuyo Tachikawa, Thibault De Garidel-Thoron (CEREGE)
Labex OT-Med - WP1, WP2
Socio-economic activities in the Mediterranean basin influence atmospheric and oceanic processes, resulting in increased water temperature, acidification, and atmospheric dust deposition events. Silicifying and calcifying plankton aggregation is strongly suspected to accelerate CO2 sequestration. However, the effects of atmospheric dust deposition and of combined acidification and warming on the structure and aggregation of these plankton assemblages are unknown.
Our project is to gather the expertise of renowned specialists in the study of calcifying and silicifying plankton communities, as well as microbiologists and geochemists to assess the effects of (1) atmospheric dust deposition on community dynamics in situ during a 2017 basin-wide sampling event (PEACETIME cruise), (2) acidification and warming on the species diversity and morphology using controlled experiments, and (3) sinking particles mineral to organic carbon ratios on the rate of organic carbon degradation to CO2.
PROJECT 5
Soil changes driven by climate change at the global and Mediterranean scale
Involved researchers: Sophie Cornu (GSE, CEREGE), Joël Guiot (CEREGE), Alberte Bondeau (IMBE)
Labex OT-Med - WP2
Soils contribute to most of the main ecosystem functions defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. They evolve permanently through time under the action of climate. Therefore better evaluation of the soil evolution in response to climate change is necessary. We propose, to evaluate the change in the main soil ecosystem functions at the 2100 horizon for the Mediterranean basin. We will develop a statistical approach, to evaluate the link between the soil classes and the climate and to derive the potential soil changes driven by climate change at the 2100 horizon and at both the Global and Mediterranean scale. Different scenarios will be considered. Change in the soil ecosystem functions will be derived from the obtained soil projections using either soil pedotransfer functions or simulations by LPJmL models. Required means from OTMed are a two years postdoc position in statistics that can be eventually be shared with another project dealing with climate change.
PROJECT 6
Natural risks in the Mediterranean: hazard, vulnerability, perception and management (RISK MED)
Involved researchers: S. Robert, A. Schleyer-Lindenmann & R. Bertoldo (ESPACE); L. Benedetti, L. Vidal & O. Bellier (CEREGE); L. Peyras & S. Bonelli (IRSTEA); H. Mazurek (LPED)
Labex OT-Med - WP3, WP1
Natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, coastal erosion/submersion or floods are a common threat to populations and infrastructures in the Mediterranean area. Their operational mode and their frequency are however very different. Moreover, their impact on society varies with the level of exposure of populations and their uneven preparedness to such events. CEREGE, ESPACE, IRSTEA and LPED propose to join together to study those natural risks through a common framework aiming at better characterising these risks and the societal response. The objective is to study both the main parameters triggering the hazard and the associated stakes and territorial vulnerabilities. Assessing the risk perception of the different social groups (e.g. citizens, stakeholders, policymakers) is also a key point in this proposal since it wishes to contribute to provide the adequate responses to the needs of those various groups in order to develop adaptive strategies. Indeed, an important common aspect of our proposal is the adaptive approach applied to risk assessment by integrating the feedback of the society to risk management, thus aiming at a proactive risk assessment strategy.
Three tasks are envisioned to fulfil those common objectives. The tasks are built upon research questions and methodology developed through individual projects that have been previously funded by OT Med (namely FEARS, GEO-RISK-MOR, M2C, postdoc R. Mudaliar, Liquefaction, LIDICAM) or are in a start-up phase (DIGUE2020). Those three tasks all deal with the aforementioned natural risks at various levels, from the risk characterization to the question of risk assessment, perception and management. The different approaches and study areas (France, Italy, Turkey and Morocco) will help to address these questions both at short term and long term.
PROJECT 7
French Mediterranean FOREst functioning in changing environments: how will Climate Change Affect the suSTainable provision of biomass and other ecosystem services? (FORECCAST)
Proposed project leader: P. Roche (Irstea)
Projects partners: CEREGE, GREDEG, IMBE, INRA and IRSTEA.
Labex OT-Med - WP2
Mediterranean forests, despite having a productivity limited by climatic and soil constraints, have a high biodiversity value and provide ecosystem services bundles resulting in benefits that are important for the development of rural and urban territories. The natural vegetation of Mediterranean areas is particularly original and is the product of both abiotic factors such as the typical constraint of Mediterranean climate, particularly the dry and hot summer and a millennia-long history of human interference with biological processes. Current climate modeling projections indicate an increase of the summer water deficit both in intensity and duration that is one of the key factors for mediterranean forests functioning. The capacity of Mediterranean tree species to adapt to the projected changes is to be questioned due to severe potential disruption of forest ecosystem functioning and large negative impacts on soil and plant diversity. In addition to climate change, there is a strong increase in the demand for forest biomass resources such as timber and wood fuel that will further impact forest ecosystems. Other associated ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, erosion control, water flow control or recreation are susceptible to be strongly impacted as well. Our project aims to address a series of key issues from ecosystem nutrient budget to socio-economic valuation of forest ecosystem services that need to be tackled in order to fully estimate the vulnerabilities of Mediterranean forests and the sustainable use of their services under climate change constraints.
Our main questions are:
- How will climate change impact Mediterranean forest ecosystem functioning and particularly the carbon and water budget? In particular we will focus on tree species growth and carbon storage, innovative isotopic methods to track water fluxes and soil-plant interactions.
- Do the structure, composition and history of mediterranean forests, shape the vulnerability of microbial functioning in litters and soils- a key component of carbon budget - to climate change?
- What are the management options to adapt mediterranean forests to climate change? In particular we will explore methods, such as canopy opening, limitation of the understory regrowth, introduction of new hardwood species or new genotypes of present species, which can modify forest functioning (e.g. light and water resources, microclimate) and improve forest resistance and resilience to CC.
- How will climate and changing social and economical demands impact the sustainable provision of ecosystem services? We will conduct a quantitative potential for supply-demand analysis for biomass based ecosystem services, regulation services (carbon, erosion) and recreation.
Our project is an interdisciplinary project resulting from the convergence of 6 different previous projects related to mediterranean forests and represents a grouping of 4 OT-MED institutes and an associated ECCOREV partner. We build our project as much as possible on existing data and results from previous and on-going projects and we will use the experiments and observations from instrumented observatories (O3HP, Fontblanche and Saint Mitre) along with statistical (Irstea) and mechanistic modeling (Castanea, INRA and LPJmL, IMBE). Besides, some functioning support and participation to the acquisition of a Picarro Spectrometer, we will request two 18 months Post-Doc and ½ PhD grant support from OT-MED. Both, the project Postdocs and the PhD Student will be jointly supervised by project partners. We aim for a 3 year project.
PROJECT 8
Aix-Marseille Metropolis Observatory for CO2
Proposed coordinator: Dominique Lefèvre (MIO)
Labex OT-Med - TWP1
PROJECT 9
Towards an integrated prediction of Land & Sea Responses to global change in the Mediterranean Basin
Proposed coordinator: Alberte Bondeau (IMBE), Melika Baklouti (MIO)
Labex OT-Med - TWP2
NOT PRESELECTED AND WITHDRAWN PROJECTS
PROJECT 1
Human Factors of Vulnerability to Natural Hazards
Proposed project leader: E. Maillé (Irstea)
Projects partners: IRSTEA, LPED, IMBE
Labex OT-Med - WP1 - WP3
The purpose of the project is to identify and assess human processes running on a territory leading to the generation or the increasement of vulnerability to natural and ecosystem related hazards. The first case of ecosystems related hazards studied by the project is forest fire. Identification and assessment of relevant human processes and their impacts on vulnerability will be based on spatial approaches, by relating maps of physical vulnerabilities on one hand, and spatial representation of georeferenced real world social networks on the other hand.
The demarche first requires the spatial assessment of local risk and vulnerability through physical models specified by risk modelers. Such models are aimed at previewing the damages inflicted to different human stakes (including human values and human beings themselves) in case a particular hazardous event occurs with a given intensity (hazard realization). Damages depend on exposure, susceptibility and defense or protection actions. In the case of forest fire, some multi-criteria models of vulnerability exist (Pugnet 2015): they provide objective assessments of these components as well as of the global vulnerability. Criteria being spatialized, the model of vulnerability allows drawing vulnerability maps.
These three components of vulnerability (exposure, susceptibility and defense/protection) are determined by socio-economical dynamics. Some particular social dynamics were previously identified being critical in terms of vulnerability generation to the particular forest fire hazard (Maillé, Aspe & al. 2014). These include information circulation within georeferenced real world social networks, which leads to share of differentiated perceptions, knowledge and risk cultures within the territory. This circulation will have to be formalized in order to assess its translation in terms of spatial distribution of individual practices, and as a consequence on physical vulnerability, which is quantified by formal physical models.
The final output will be a generic global human/physical model for the assessment of vulnerability to natural hazard. A spatial decision support tool will be specified in order to preview future developments.
PROJECT 2
Speciation, sources and fate of atmospheric Phosphorus delivered from chemical weapons and flame retardants in areas across the Mediterranean Sea.
Proposed coordinator: C. Panagiotopoulos (MIO)
Labex OT-Med - WP1
The production and use of chemical weapons –although condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world- remains undoubtedly the number one enemy of human species. Moreover, the extensive use of flame retardants to inhibit/delay fires considerably increased the last couple years because of the increased number of fires in countries across the Mediterranan Sea especially in summer period. Chemical weapons and flame retardants contain phosphorus compounds and currently very little is known regarding their fate in the environment (terrestrial or marine) and more importantly in their consequences on humans (use of chemical weapons in Syria March 2013). This research aims to identify and quantify specific degradation P-compounds delivered by chemical weapon agents as well as flame retardans and establish –if any- a link with the atmospheric P-cycle from an environmental perspective. We are seeking a collaboration via the institutes within AMU to study the toxicity and their impact in humans species or other organisms and evaluate their overall socio-economical impact to the society.