The PRECOS framework: Measuring the impacts of the global changes on soils, water, agriculture on territories to better anticipate the future

Abstract

In a context of increased land and natural resources scarcity, the possibilities for local authorities and stakeholders of anticipating evolutions or testing the impact of envisaged developments through scenario simulation are new challenges. PRECOS's approach integrates data pertaining to the fields of water and soil resources, agronomy, urbanization, land use and infrastructure etc. It is complemented by a socio-economic and regulatory analysis of the territory illustrating its constraints and stakes. A modular architecture articulates modeling software and spatial and temporal representations tools. It produces indicators in three core domains: soil degradation, water and soil resources and agricultural production. As a territory representative of numerous situations of the Mediterranean Basin (urban pressures, overconsumption of spaces, degradation of the milieus), a demonstration in the Crau's area (Southeast of France) has allowed to validate a prototype of the approach and to test its feasibility in a real life situation. Results on the Crau area have shown that, since the beginning of the 16th century, irrigated grasslands are the cornerstones of the anthropic-system, illustrating how successfully men's multi-secular efforts have maintained a balance between environment and local development. But today the ecosystem services are jeopardized firstly by urban sprawl and secondly by climate change. Pre-diagnosis in regions of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) and Valencia (Spain) show that local end-users and policy-makers are interested by this approach. The modularity of indicator calculations and the availability of geo-databases indicate that PRECOS may be up scaled in other socio-economic contexts.

Identification of dominant hydrogeochemical processes for groundwaters in the Algerian Sahara supported by inverse modeling of chemical and isotopic data

“…Inverse modeling was used to calculate the number of minerals and gases' moles that must, respectively, dissolve or precipitate/degas to account for the difference in composition between initial and final water end members (Plummer and Back, 1980;Kenoyer and Bowser, 1992;Deutsch, 1997;Plummer and Sprinckle, 2001;Güler and Thyne, 2004;Parkhurst and Appelo, 2013). This mass balance technique has been used to quantify reactions controlling water chemistry along flow paths (Thomas et al, 1989). It is also used to quantify the mixing proportions of end-member components in a flow system (Kuells et al, 2000;Belkhiri et al, 2010Belkhiri et al, , 2012.…”

“…These requirements are fulfilled in the region of Ouargla, which can be considered as a "window" to the largest Saharan aquifer, and thus one of the largest aquifers in the world in a semi-arid to hyper-arid region subject to both global changes: urban sprawl and climate change. The methodology developed here and the data collected can easily be integrated in the PRECOS framework proposed for the management of environmental resources (Trolard et al, 2016).…”

Incentives to contribute to flood adaptation in cities : Stakeholder analyses in Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands

“…In recent literature, flood adaptation has become a heavily explored issue. Relevant topics include assessments of cities to judge the extent to which they manage flooding (Swart et al, 2014;Van Leeuwen and Sjerps, 2015), theoretical frameworks (van Leeuwen et al, 2012;Almeida et al, 2014;Kingsborough et al, 2016;Trolard et al, 2016), visions for city futures (Eames et al, 2013;Jeffers, 2013), and green solutions to drainage (Bisgrove, 2010;Faram et al, 2010;Tillie and van der Heijden, 2015).…”

Combination of a crop model and a geochemical model as a new approach to evaluate the sustainability of an intensive agriculture system

“…In the circumstances of global changes, i.e. urban sprawl and climate change, risks of degradation of natural and agricultural environments increase and territories become more vulnerable (Pachauri et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2007;Pageaud and Carré, 2009;Olioso et al, 2013;Baillieux et al, 2015;Trolard et al, 2016). Climate change may positively or negatively impact the services provided by ecosystems on which our social systems depend (Trolard and Dangeard, 2014).…”