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Environmental Network in the Mediterranean
The French research syndicate SICMED cooperates with the German TERENO-MED Network to conduct a long-term investigation of the effects the demographic, economic and climatic change has on Mediterranean water resources and ecosystems. The TERENO-MED Network is headed by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in cooperation with the Research Centre Jülich.
The motivation for this undertaking is the fact that climatic changes have a particular strong impact on the Mediterranean Basin. For instance, they can cause droughts or shortage of water. The problem is intensified by the current political developments in North Africa and the Near East, the population growth, in particular by way of migration and the economic developments in that region. Germany and France therefore have intensified and interlinked their activities: The Helmholtz Association extends its integrated long-term environmental observatories – TERENO – by a network of observatories located in the Mediterranean to form "TERENO-MED". On the French side, a number of research initiatives have joined forces to form the pan-institutional "MISTRALS" (Mediterranean Integrated STudies at Regional And Local Scales) network. One of these is the SICMED project, which observes changes in land usage and effects on ecology and water, similarly to TERENO-MED. Both research syndicates intend to develop solution strategies for a sustainable development of the Mediterranean region and aim at intensifying their cooperation in order to harmonise concepts, methods and models and to build joint research sites. In the medium term, a comprehensive Euro-Mediterranean project focusing on this subject is to be launched.
