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.

As pointed out by international organizations and an abundant scientific literature, water is a strategic issue in the Mediterranean region, mainly because of the rarefaction of the resources, in quantity and/or quality, facing the ever increasing demand and the problem of sharing water scarcity. Vulnerability linked with water is paramount in the semi-arid North Africa, where climatic hazards and environmental changes induced by human activities reinforce the likelihood of crises, and where the unequal distribution of resources contributes to increasing the competition between water uses and users. The AMETHYST project aims to analyze the co-evolutions of the water resources under the influence of global change (climate and anthropogenic changes) and of the water uses trajectories. We focus our work on the Maghreb because a large range of evolutions is still possible in this region, far from the extremely severe situations of coastal Spain or Israël on one side, from the reasonably comfortable situations of northern Italy or south-eastern France on the other side. Two case studies will be considered, the Merguellil catchment (near Kairouan, in central Tunisia) and the Tensift region (near Marrakech, Morocco). They are emblematic of water scarcity issues, with rich complementarities in terms of environmental context, water uses, sector competitions, hydraulic history and current water policies. They can also provide large sets of data because of previous long-term research works. We propose an inter-disciplinary project combining physical, social, economic and political sciences, with three research axes: (1) A numerical platform of the integrated functioning of the water resources evolution will be developed, based on models driven by in-situ, reanalysis or scenario data as well as satellite products and anthropogenic constraints arising from the study of the reciprocal impacts of water uses and policy regulations on water resources. (2) Based on a diachronic data analysis and a diagnostic run of this platform, we will analyze the evolution of water resources in the past fifty years in relation to many environmental social, economic, political and technological factors that have interacted. We’ll not only look at trends but also at the way the system reacts after events such as drought or social upheavals. (3) Various scenarios, based on climate and anthropogenic modifications associated with socio-economic projections, will be tested to anticipate effects on water resources trajectories in the next twenty years (extended to fifty years for climate change scenarios), by numerical modeling and by participative approaches. The high ambition of this project is to enhance exchanges between environmental and human sciences at every step of the research, from the acquisition of data to the common definition of prospective scenarios. This shared approach seems the best answer to the urgent water issues in the region, and in particular for providing concrete elements of information to water managers, authorities and stakeholders with whom we will work for the whole duration of the project.

The project is designed to create in Maghreb a PhD school in regular PhD programs in water & environment, improve existing prerequisite courses and develop new modern courses to train staff and PhD students, through a regional Hydroplatform establishment based on open GIS and modeling softwares, to follow-up the recent water strategies in Maghreb (2010-2030).This goal is consistent with the HE system reform adopted in Maghreb universities (MA, DZ, TN). Through this JP Maghreb and EU Universities will integrate academic community and will lead to more effective transfer of knowledge, teaching/research skills-methods from EU partners to PC. The objectives of the project are planned to be achieved by development of new courses on open source modeling using Maghreb partners experience and needs and EU partners advanced technologies. The Maghreb hydroplatform will be created in Maghreb and accessible online for Maghreb & EU partners for PhD course trainings, perform studies, water project design and share data via SDI. Relevant capacity building activities are foreseen to support newly created hydroplatform and to train Maghreb teachers: staff mobilities, new courses, teaching laboratories & library resources upgrading. Target groups of students and staff will follow the programs through mobilities; and first group of this study program will graduate from partner universities, during project implementation and after the project end to ensure sustainability. Two open dissemination seminars at the end of each year of the project implementation, creation of Internet Home Page and publication & distribution of dissemination leaflets are also envisaged. The sustainability of the project results will be ensured by incorporating the new courses into partner universities and new trainings for available water centres in the 3 MAG countries. Government support will cover costs of teaching/maintenance and further resources are ensured from offered trainings to water companies.

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.