Reproduced, with permission, from:
MEDIAS Secretariat. 1993. Regional Research Network on Global Environmental Change in the Mediterranean Basin and Subtropical Africa. Toulouse, France: MEDIAS Regional Research Network.
Coordination between the participating research groups within the Mediterranean Basin (MEDI) and Subtropical Africa (AS) is being implemented through a Regional Research Network called MEDIAS. The main aim of the MEDIAS Network is to promote appropriate interdisciplinary studies that address global environmental issues, and to develop data distribution, modelling, training, synthesis of results and dialogue with the socio-economic world, on a cooperative basis at regional scale.
MEDIAS objectives and plans have been discussed at the first MEDIAS Meeting held in Toulouse (France) in February 1992, attended by about 120 participants from twenty-five countries throughout the region. An International Pilot Committee for the MEDIAS Network has been established. MEDIAS has received further mandate from START at the Conference "Africa and Global Change" held at Niamey (Niger) in November 1992 to play a coordinating role for MED and NAF. At the French level a Regional Research Centre, linked to the MEDIAS Network, has been created in order to impulse the MED Network and to contribute to the coordination of the Network activities of both MED and NAF regions. Six institutions (CERFACS, CLS, CNES, METEO-FRANCE SPOT-IMAGE, and Toulouse University), working in close collaboration with ORSTOM and CNRS laboratories, are joining in a public, non-profit corporation, headquartered in Toulouse, called MEDIAS-FRANCE. Moreover the Commission of European Communities (CEC) is developing the "ENRICH European Network for Research in global Change" to coordinate international collaboration between CEC, Central and Eastern Europe and developing countries. The MEDIAS Network will provide a framework to ENRICH for research and training with particular focus on Mediterranean and African needs.
The regions involved in the MEDIAS Network include all those countries that border on the Mediterranean sea and embracing almost all of Africa north of the equator. The specificity of these areas results from the conjunction of three factors: wide range of marginal zones extremely sensitive to climatic variability and subject to possible migration shift; pronounced meridional gradient from the equatorial rainforests to Sahara through the sub-Saharan savannah woodlands and the Sahel; and series of severe periodic droughts with concomitant human suffering.
The scientific challenge of global change is to develop our predictive understanding of the regional relationships between the three basic components of the global environmental systems, that are the physical climate system, the biogeochemical cycles and the social processes.
Priorities of atmospheric studies deal with the water cycle availability and storage, dynamic of rainfall and drought, partitioning of energy on Earth and with the chemical composition of the atmosphere, both strongly influenced by biological processes and human action.
Oceanographic studies in the framework of MEDIAS focus on the Mediterranean sea and the Tropical Atlantic, with a view to investigate the complex biological and chemical processes that regulate the oceanic transport and transformation of carbon. The overall aim is also to develop a capacity to predict on a regional scale the response of these processes to anthropogenic perturbations (increasing manmade CO2 emissions, riverine sediment discharge, marine pollution), in particular those related to climate change.
The land environment has also been identified as of highest and immediate priority for understanding the effects of changes in climate, atmospheric composition and land use on terrestrial ecosystems, and for determining feedback effects to the physical climate system. Particular concerns include soil erosion, sand-hill migration and expansion or contraction of the Sahara desert boundaries, aerosol climatology, African savannah fires which produce as much as one third of the total global emissions from biomass burning, land-cover and urbanisation or pest control.
A fully comprehensive study of global change need to integrate the human dimension to improve our understanding of both human-induced and naturally-induced drivers and their impacts. Social sciences priorities focus on six components which interact among themselves and with the global environmental processes: fund of knowledge and experience preferences and expectations (cultural constraints), factors of production and technology (including resources), population and social structure (demography), economic systems, and political system and institutions. Research programmes are being developed to advance knowledge on the socio-economic causes and impacts of global change as MEDIAS include heavily populated regions subject to a long history of extensive land use.
There is a need for a long-term observing system to monitor, describe and provide observations for climate system and biogeochemical cycle trend analysis. Four elements require particular focus and attention:
Global modelling studies in IGBP will couple vegetation (land surface scheme parameterization), atmospheric (general circulation models) and oceanic models to develop our predictive understanding of the behaviour of the Earth system as a whole. MEDIAS aims at improving the supply and management of the considerable global and regional data sets needed for the development, calibration and validation of these models. MEDIAS activities are thus cross-cutting, being connected to all IGBP/WCRP/HDP projects and facilitating collaboration and links between the technical computer centres.
The crucial role of data and information systems and the importance of data management methodologies in support of global environmental change research are now clearly recognised. The large variety of types and sources of global, regional, and local data needs to strengthen data management programme and accessibility, to extend database directory, and to foster data exchange. Information distribution facilities to the MEDIAS research community are being implemented (MEDIAS Newsletter, electronic mail) and data bases (e.g. Hapex-sahel, pilot sites, climate data series) are implemented within the Data and Information System for Global Change (GEODIS) with advanced computing and networking capability being designed at the French Space Agency (CNES).
The MEDIAS Regional Research Network will provide a regional focus for training in interdisciplinary environmental science. This will be achieved through fellowships, shot courses, workshops and seminars, exchange programmes, and "mobile" international school, closely linked to existing higher education establishment. Two international summer Schools have been organised in France and Spain in 1992 with MEDIAS support. The next training session will take place in Niamey (Niger) in December 1993, coordinated with the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), ICRISAT, the Regional AGRHYMET Centre and the University of Niamney. The organisation of numerical modelling training sessions are also planned on a regular basis in collaboration with regional and national structures.
Established in 1986 the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme: A Study of Global Change is aimed at "describing and understanding the interactive physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate the total Earth system, the unique environment it provides for life, the changes that are occurring in the system, and the manner in which they are influenced by human action."
The IGBP has developed a set of linked core projects to investigate the life-driven interactions within and between the land, atmosphere and ocean components of the Earth system. The fundamental issue is that humankind is altering, in ways that are not well understood, virtually all the systems and cycles that together make life possible on Earth. Major environmental problems such as greenhouse gas warming, depletion of stratospheric ozone, reduction in species diversity, deforestation and desertification are of particular concern.
The IGBP along with its international companion programmes WCRP (World Climate Research Programme) and HDP (Human Dimension Programme) address the dynamic and transdisciplinary nature of the Earth system which requires integrating research approaches between natural and social sciences.
A worldwide fieldwork programme and research network are required to achieve these goals, involving scientists from all nations. There is a critical need to stimulate research which focus on regional origins and implications of global change and to promote interdisciplinary studies on a regional basis.
The IGBP SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START) provides the necessary structure of networks, centres and sites to address the regional aspects of global change. It also provides training, to strengthen the much-needed participation of developing countries in IGBP research. Regional Research Networks should progressively be established in each of the 13 regions which have been defined as a primary basis in terms of scientific needs, biogeographical features and existing regional collaborations.
An important effort in developing START activities is being directed at the Mediterranean (MED) and North Africa (NAF) region. These are currently subject to strong interannual climate variability, and could be severely impacted by further shifts in climate patterns.
For more information on the MEDIAS Regional Research Network and the MEDIAS-FRANCE Centre, contact:
Secretariat MEDIASCNES-BP.2102, 18, Avenue Edouard-Belin
31055 Toulouse Cedex, France
Tel.: +(33) 61 28 26 67,
Fax: +(33) 61 28 29 05
Telemail: J.FELLOUS/OMNET
E-mail: fellous@cnesta.span.cnes.fr