“Modelling climate change impacts on water and crops at different scales” is the international school that will take place in Alghero (Catalunya Hotel, November 05-09, 2012) and that aims at providing a broad and in-depth discussion on methodologies and tools to assess the impacts of climate change on agriculture and water resources considering different scales, from field to regional. The school also focuses on the identification and evaluation of adaptation strategies, with regards also on food security threats.

It is common knowledge that climate change and its impact on water resources and agricultural systems is one of the most pressing issues humanity is facing nowadays. The inverse relationship between a rapidly growing population and decreasing global resources poses the necessity to thoroughly understand and predict the impact of climate change on ecosystems and devise far sighted policies for adaptation and mitigation strategies.

A significant increase in extremes of meteorological phenomena is predicted to happen during the next decades. As water resources and crop growth and productivity are highly dependent on climatic conditions, the agricultural sector at the global level will be directly affected. The evaluation of potential impacts deriving from climate change represents, therefore, one of the major challenges for the next decades. Thus the objective should be the identification of the most effective strategies for the mitigation of impacts and adaptation to climate change.

In this framework, the School aims at providing to doctoral, post doctoral students and professionals a broad and updated discussion dealing with
cross-cutting themes such as:

• Climate modeling and downscaling techniques;
• Models and tools for the assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture and evaluation of changes in crop management as adaptation/mitigation strategies;
• Socio-economic issues.

“Modelling climate change impacts on water and crops at different scales” is an international Fall School organized by:

• Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), the Italian based institution on international research on climate change. Impacts on Agriculture, Forest, and Natural Ecosystems division (IAFENT) is the CMCC research Division that, based in Sassari and Viterbo, focuses on the diagnosis and forecast of climate change impacts on agriculture and on natural and semi-natural earth ecosystems, mainly with a Mediterranean climate but also for all the globe.
• CLIMAFRICA Project the research project that, funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission, aims at developing improved climate predictions on seasonal to decadal scale in Sub-Saharan Africa and assess the climate impacts on water resources and agriculture, while evaluating vulnerabilities and suggesting relevant adaptation strategies.

The Fall School is organized with the collaboration of the University of Sassari and the University of Tuscia.

Scientific Coordinators:

Prof. Donatella SPANO CMCC – IAFENT / University of Sassari

Prof. Riccardo Valentini CMCC – IAFENT / University of Tuscia

Lecturers:

Francesco BOSELLO FEEM

Edoardo BUCCHIGNANI CIRA / CMCC – ISC

Jon LIZASO Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Valentina MEREU CMCC – IAFENT / University of Sassari

Monia SANTINI CMCC – IAFENT / University of Tuscia

Enrico SCOCCIMARRO INGV /CMCC

Richard L. SNYDER University of California, Davis

Antonio TRABUCCO CMCC – IAFENT

Venue and date:

Alghero – Catalunya Hotel – 05 – 09 November 2012

Contacts:

Gavriil Kyriakakis: [email protected]

Valentina Mereu: [email protected]

Picture credits: CC by cristian_puddu at Flickr