Global changes: characterization, impacts & adaptations

Climate change, global changes, Prospects, Adaptation, Resilience, Hydrology modeling, Future climate simulation, Water resource availability, Extreme events, Impacts on ecosystems, ecological issues

This course provides students with an introduction to the climatic, environmental and anthropic changes that impact our hydro-eco-socio-systems today and tomorrow.

The activities offer a focus on certain aspects, not exhaustive, of this vast field whose knowledge is constantly evolving.

Beyond the presentation of issues, figures and concepts, students learn about hydrological modeling tools that allow the development of future scenarios of resource evolution. They analyze a concrete subject by crossing disciplines and approaches. They discuss the possibilities of adapting to the impacts of changes.

The activities consist of 3 parts: The course activity, the modeling activity, and the bibliography activity.

- During the course, the principles of climate modeling, the construction of climate change scenarios and their limits are explained. The orders of magnitude of the main changes are stated, as well as the major issues of sustainable development, climate change and global change. A particular focus is proposed around the French Mediterranean watersheds (climate change hot spot, decreasing availability of water resources, agricultural practices and adaptations, irrigation, tourism...).

- The concepts of hydrological modeling and calibration in a non-stationary or poorly gauged context are taught and an introduction to hydrological modeling is carried out with an application case. The students manipulate general hydrological models allowing to evaluate flows and balances (of type GR, HEC-HMS or WEAP), to feed them with outputs of climatic models, to generate future scenarios of flow and balance, then to criticize the scenarios thus built. The modeling work done in small groups is the subject of an oral presentation.

- Finally, the bibliography done in class and completed independently should allow students to specialize around a concrete case of the study of a change occurring in a compartment of a natural or urbanized hydro-eco-system (that the students choose). They carry out a literature review to identify the societal or environmental issues arising from these changes, as well as the scientific questions inherent in the implementation of measures to reduce their impacts or to adapt. They must identify how their case study is similar to other cases, but also how it differs from them. Finally, they open their analysis to a more general methodology that can be applied to other case studies to characterize these changes, their impacts and the adaptation measures. The students write

a synthetic note for operational purposes (bibliography, similar studies, controversies, operational tools, protocols, orders of magnitude). Then they make a pitch of their results to the class.

- Understand the mechanisms of global changes (processes, interaction, combined effects, hydrological impacts) and the limits of their characterization (uncertainties, available modeling tools)

- Deploy a scientific approach to answer a concrete problem

- Write a summary note with an operational vocation

- Communicate in a punchy format (pitch type)

M1 S1 Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (or equivalent), reading of a general hydrology book, IPCC summaries

Continuous assessment of the final presentation of the project (and intermediate reports)