Bernard Seguin

Title of contribution : The impacts of climate change on agriculture in France

Proposer and contact : Bernard Seguin, INRA, unité Agroclim Site Agroparc, domaine Saint-Paul, F- 84914 Avignon

Objectives of MoU to be addressed:
Evaluation of possible impacts from climate change and variability on agriculture

Envisaged contribution and parts of the scientific programme:
Give the information on the results of INRA studies and exchange with other studies in European countries in order to obtain a comprehensive picture at the European level. It is intended to mainly contribute to the WG2, and to also have interactions with the other groups (WG, 3 and 4) if possible.

Deliverables:
Contributions by presentations of our activities and results in France ( the concerned crops are wheat, maize, grassland, apple, grapevine; the impacts of mean warming and some extremes like spring frost, heat stress, drought and excess rain on  crop phenology and yield, and some pests and diseases).
Participation to collective scientific papers resulting from the gathering of studies on the whole European scale.

Indicative timetable:
It is intended to use the first year for communicating the information on our results for France, then to participate in the elaboration of European syntheses during the next years.

Resources:
My personal activity will be the equivalent of one month/year full-time activity, but it will communicate the recent and foreseen outputs of about 2 to 3 full-time researchers within INRA.

Available resources: Yes, I can assure.

Foreseen collaboration:
Within the action, described in 4 and 5.
External: at the moment, no other.

Previous experience:

INRA has performed studies on the impact of climate change on agriculture in France since 10 to 15 years, and they have been reinforced from 2002 personal relevant publications on the subject:

GERVOIS S., DE NOBLET N., VIOVY N., CIAIS P., BRISSON N., SEGUIN B., PERRIER A. (2004). Including croplands in a global biosphere model : methodology and evaluation on specific sites. Earth Interactions, ‘ Land-use ‘ special issue, vol 8 (16), 1-25

CHUINE I.,YIOU P., VIOVY N., SEGUIN B., DAUX V., LE ROY LADURIE E. (2004) Back to the Middle Ages ? Grape harvest dates and temperature variations in France since 1370. Nature, 432,289-290.

SEGUIN B., GARCIA DE CORTAZAR.I (2005). Climate warming : consequences for viticulture and the notion of terroirs in Europe. Acta Horticulturae, 689,61-71.

PERARNAUD V., SEGUIN B., MALEZIEUX E., DEQUE M., LOUSTAU D. (2005). Agrometeorological research and applications needed to prepare agriculture and forestry adapt to 21st century climate change. Climatic change, 70, 319-340.

SEGUIN, B., ARROUAYS, D., BALESDENT, J., SOUSSANA, J.F., BONDEAU, A., SMITH, P.,  ZAEHLE, S.,  DE NOBLET, N., VIOVY,N. (2006) How to moderate the impact of agriculture on climate: the present limits of scientific knowledge in terms of integrated assessment. Agric.For.Meteor. (in press)