The contamination of natural ecosystems, food and water resources by pesticides is matter of concern for the scientific community, policy and industry stakeholders, collectivities, and the society in general. Within this context, streams and rivers have the capacity to collect inputs from the watershed (including pesticides) and re-distribute them towards human activities and adjacent ecosystems, supplying important ecosystem services such as self-depuration of surface waters. At present, the herbicide glyphosate (also known by its tradename Roundup) is at the head of the list of the most frequently detected pesticides in surface waters from Europe. In France, the aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), which is the primary degradation product of glyphosate, is the most often detected molecule (60% detection frequency at concentrations ranging 0.1-48 µg/L) and the second is the glyphosate itself (30-40% detection frequency, 0.2-165 µg/L). This wide detection of glyphosate and AMPA in rivers, especially at their most downstream sections, suggest weak biodegradation capacities by riverine microbial communities which are often subjected to multi-stress factors influencing their activity, structure, and diversity. The BIGLY project aims to investigate the capacity of riverine biofilms to degrade the herbicide glyphosate. While few research programs have assessed the capacity of natural biofilms in removing pesticides from waters, several laboratory studies have already identified microbial strains capable to degrade glyphosate through the AMPA and sarcosine degradation pathways. Knowing that glyphosate utilization by bacteria and cyanobacteria is mostly associated to the acquisition of inorganic phosphorus, phosphorus eutrophication gradients in rivers might compromise biofilm self-depuration capacities for glyphosate. The BIGLY project proposes an interdisciplinary, multi-scale, and multi-organism approach permitting to address both fundamental and applied research questions on glyphosate degradation by riverine biofilms: - Is there a link between rivers eutrophication and biofilm potential to decompose glyphosate? - Which are the microorganisms and enzymes involved in glyphosate degradation in biofilms? - Can heterotrophy and global warming enhance glyphosate degradation by biofilms? Results from the BIGLY project will allow determining glyphosate contamination thresholds and self-depuration capacities of biofilms that will certainly contribute to improve glyphosate remediation procedures (species and enzymes involved) and management of agricultural and urban watersheds. This project will permit also to better comprehend the ecology of riverine biofilms in pesticide-contaminated systems and predict their evolutions (in terms of structure, biodiversity, and activity) in a context of global change: rivers channelization, eutrophication, and global warming. Finally, the main outcomes of this research program will be disseminated to academic, policy and industry stakeholders using targeted communication tools, and contribute to the training of highly qualified personnel.

Anaerobic digestion is a process of degradation of the organic matter carried out by a complex network of microorganisms that produces biogas rich in methane, which can be ultimately converted to energy. The process performance hinges on the structure and the interactions among the species in the microbial community, which is at the same time determined by the digesters operational conditions. Currently, the control of the anaerobic digestion process relies on monitoring physico-chemical indicators that do not allow precise identification of the origin of the disturbances, since these physico-chemical indicators cannot describe in detail the biological dynamics in the digesters. This represents a real difficulty for operators because digesters failure can be due to many different causes. As the microbial community in the digesters is very sensible to the alterations in the operational conditions during AD, our research hypothesis is that the monitoring of the microbial community can be used as a more effective method to evaluate the digesters’ functioning than classical physicochemical indicators. The use of high-throughput techniques from the biological field (i.e. 16S DNA metabarcoding and metabolomics) could be a very powerful mean to realize such monitoring and reveal the nature of the process disturbances. However, until recently, high-throughput techniques were limited to selected lab studies as they were expensive, time-consuming, and the results were not easily transferable to industrial systems. Methodological developments now allow more feasible and faster approaches able to capture the biological particuliarities of the ADs systems and to develop fast diagnosis tools. In this line, the Methadiag project has three main objectives: (i) First, we will develop specific analytical protocols for high-throughput techniques that could be used on-site or enable a quick response (Task1a) (ii) Second, we will evaluate to what extent anaerobic digesters are comparable at the microbial and molecular levels and common diagnosis tools could be developed (Task1b) (iii) Finally, based on data obtained from full scale digesters and additional lab-scale experiments, we will establish a set of microbial and molecular biomarkers to monitor digester functioning by the fast diagnostic tools developed (Task2). This project includes both basic and applied research lines, and results from the two types are therefore expected. On the one hand, the expected results from the basic research line are 1) the development of analytical methods to allow the on-site handling of anaerobic digester sludge for 16S metabarcoding and metabolomics analysis, 2) the improvement of the general understanding of the functioning of full-scale ADs in terms of 16S metabarcoding and metabolomics data, and 3) the design of data analysis pipelines for the discovery of warning indicators that could be applied to investigate similar experiments. On the other hand, the expected results from the applied research line are 1) a list of warning indicators that can be monitored to assess the ADs well-functioning, and 2) a user-friendly Graphical User Interface to visualize and interpret the ADs well-functioning on the basis to the warning indicators. In general, the main originality of the project resides in the design of transferable tools suitable for fast diagnosis in AD plants. The results obtained in this project will allow improved monitoring of the anaerobic digesters, with the objective to achieve more efficient processes and a higher level of sustainability.

MASCC aims to address mitigation and adaptation strategies to global change by assessing current and future evolution of Mediterranean agricultural soil vulnerability to erosion in relation to projected land use, agricultural practices and climate change. It targets to i) assess the similarities/dissimilarities in dominant factors affecting the current Mediterranean agricultural soil vulnerability by exploring a wide range of Mediterranean contexts; ii) improve the ability to evaluate the impact of extreme events on both the current and projected agricultural soil vulnerability and the sediment delivery at catchment outlet; iii) provide benchmarks regarding the vulnerability of agricultural production to a combination of potential changes in a wide range of Mediterranean contexts, iv) and provide guidelines on sustainable agricultural conservation strategies adapted to each specific agro-ecosystem taking into consideration both on- and off-site erosion effects and socio-economics issues. To reach these objectives, the MASCC project will gather researchers from 6 Mediterraneanean countries (France, Morocco, Tunisia ; Italy, Spain, Portugal) that monitor mid- to long-term environmental catchment and that get mutual knowledge due to previous projects and network. The major advantages for the project are: i) the availability of an unrivalled database on soil erosion, (innovative) agriculture practices covering a wide range of Mediterranean contexts, ii) the capacity to better evaluate the impact of extreme events on soil erosion, iii) the availability of the LANDSOIL , a catchment-scale integrated approach of the soil-landscape system that enables to simulate both the sediment fluxes at the catchment outlet and the soil evolution properties, iv) the multi-disciplinarity of the involved researchers with an international reputation in the fields of soil science, modelling changes in soil properties, erosion and sediment transport, agronomy and socio-economy. The MASCC project will be conducted through a coordination and dissemination workpackage and three scientific work-packages : WP1 will consist in elaborating plausible scenario (climatic, land use and adaptative innovative agricultural practices) for the future (20 to 50 years); WP2 will simulate soil vulnerability for current conditions and scenarios from WP1; and WP3 will focus on the comparative evaluation of present and future on-site and off-site effects of soil erosion on agriculture sustainability.