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In order to anticipate the response, in terms of both adaptation and contribution to mitigation, of agricultural systems in north-western Europe to climate change, it is necessary to propose changes in cropping systems and their organisation in the territory. The objective of the AIR-CC project is to create a consortium of complementary skills located mainly on either side of the Franco-Belgian border in order to optimise the preparation of a future long-term project on the management of climate change for agriculture, by anchoring it in the context of the region's agricultural systems.

In southern Europe, climate change is leading to an increase in the demand for irrigation water for crops. Various levers are being implemented to save irrigation water, including improved technologies such as subsurface drip irrigation. One paradigm shift would be to improve water efficiency, not only by optimising irrigation actions, but through agro-ecological practices, such as conservation agriculture (CA). The objective of the COMIC'EAU project is to study an innovative irrigated Mediterranean cropping system that combines two complementary approaches to water saving: CA and subsurface drip irrigation. On the scale of this two-year project, the aim is to evaluate the agro-environmental and economic performance of this combination in field crops during the transition period of soil properties, in order to see if effects are rapidly perceptible and lead to changes in water inputs.

In the face of climate change, the specific and intra-specific diversification of trees (particularly assisted migration) is envisaged as an active adaptation practice by forest and rural managers. In urban areas, abiotic stresses, particularly hydric and thermal, are already exacerbated; thus, the high specific diversity of trees in the urban forest constitutes a full-scale trial to test the adaptive capacities of trees in the face of climate change, in order to help the transitions underway. The UFO project brings together researchers from different disciplines to characterise the abiotic stress resistance capacities of trees in urban areas, in order to complement and anticipate forestry trials with a view to adapting to climate change through diversification in tree systems, and to analyse tree diversity and tree diversification practices, past and present, in urban and forest areas, and to assess the acceptance by the various stakeholders of the changes that could be brought about by the use of assisted migration.

In natural populations, especially for sessile organisms with long life spans such as trees, the strength and direction of selection can vary in space and time. This concerns therefore biological systems generally far from equilibrium, whose adaptation to the environment over short geographical distances (typically within a stand) depends on the interaction between the processes of selective filtering of genotypes (which in turn depend on the available genetic diversity and the spatial variation of environments) and the dispersal of propagules and genes. The MODEGRAD project will develop modelling approaches to assess (a) the effect of spatial and temporal heterogeneity on stand adaptation and (b) the impact of climate change and silvicultural management on the adaptation and adaptive potential of forests in the short and medium term, in order to facilitate adaptive and evolutionary forest management.

The development of the production and consumption of grain legumes can be a lever for contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and moreover to the transition of diets. However, the services rendered by legumes to a territory may differ according to the production area allocated, the species grown, the management methods used and the markets. The MACHICOULIS project (for "Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change through the introduction of legumes in Occitanie: interdisciplinary design of a conceptual modelling approach adapted to the regionalization of agricultural systems") proposes to develop an interdisciplinary research approach in order to build a conceptual and methodological framework for modelling and evaluating development scenarios for grain legumes and the services they provide. Its application to the Occitanie region (southern France) will make it possible to identify strategies that could improve the resilience and mitigation of climate change in the region and, ultimately, to support public policies in orientating field crop rotations. The proposed framework will be generic enough to be used in other regions.

The ESACC-AGRO project proposes to analyse the interactions between the evolution dynamics of irrigated and rainfed agriculture and the objectives of water resources conservation in a context of climate change, in two contrasting drainage basins where other water uses are in competition today or could be in the future. Thus, the project aims to contribute to a better anticipation of the risks posed by changes in hydrological regimes and to identify mitigation and adaptation strategies for agriculture that could make it possible to reconcile farm viability, hydrosystem sustainability and agricultural carbon neutrality.

The REDELAC project aims to simulate the medium-term evolution of the functioning of lowland dairy farms, to look at the impact of the future climate and associated uncertainties but also of climate variability, on the evolution of these systems, with a particular focus on the consequences of climatic hazards. In particular, the aim will be to assess the adaptive evolution of the feeding plan and the consequences for milk production, forage autonomy, resilience and the carbon footprint of typical systems in response to climate change. The simulations will take into account the adaptation of grazing to the availability of grass, seeking to maximise this practice in order to meet the challenges of an agro-ecological transition of systems and animal welfare. The identification and characterisation of breakpoints in the resilience of grazing systems to climate hazards will be sought in order to identify potential incompatibilities between their adaptation and their participation in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This interdisciplinary exploratory project will be confined to a territory in Brittany, for example a PAT or a PCAET, and to a limited number of dairy farms representative of this territory. The methodology developed could be extended to other areas of interest at a later date.

The objective of the OTAF project is to define silvicultural adaptation trajectories applied to a sample of forest eco-regions and at the level of the whole of France, for the period 2000-2100. It will be based on version 2.0 of the simulations carried out for the whole of France by the Forests-21 project. The analysis methods used will take into account several levels of uncertainty. OTAF will compare a mathematical approach with what experts say, and will make it possible to specify the contributions and limits of deterministic modelling for adaptive and anticipatory forest management at the regional and national levels.

The aim of the GenA(t)ACC network is to identify generic research questions (animal, plant) for statistical methodologies applied to the genetics of managed and selected populations, in a context of climate change, in order to meet the challenges of mitigation and adaptation. The consortium will focus on the methodological challenges of predicting the genetic component of population responses in this context, while integrating models of the response of organisms to the environment. It will also look at the integration of mitigation and adaptation factors into these predictions. It will contribute to the sharing of knowledge with a view to building a network of scientists in bioclimatology, ecophysiology, physiology, genetics and mathematics.

The Mediterranean Basin’s exposure to climate change is generating major risks for agricultural sectors, with impacts likely to increase inequalities within and between territories. The VIAMED-Clim project aims to develop and operationalise a multi-level framework for analysing the resilience of agriculture, by focusing on inequalities in terms of exposure and access to resources in the face of climate change. Two areas will be studied: Siliana (Tunisia) and the Aude valley (France), with a gradient of extreme weather events, of production diversification and productive resources.