Serpentine (ultramafic) outcrops in Europe cover over 10,000 km2 and have a low-fertility and low-productivity, making them unattractive for traditional agriculture. Many of these areas are slowly abandoned by farmers, with rural exodus and landscape closure. However, ultramafic landscapes have potential to provide multiple ecosystem services and contribute to Europe’s goals towards insuring food security, production of renewable raw materials and renewable energy. The idea of phytomining metals emerged in the 90s and the goal was to cultivate plants able to accumulate trace metals from metal-rich soils and transport them to the shoots (>1%), which could then be harvested as a bio-ore to recover highly valuable metals, e.g. nickel (Ni). More recently, the concept has evolved as an integrated chain from soil management to production of bio-sourced refined metal products. Nickel agromining can offer an eco-efficient alternative to classical pyro- or hydrometallurgical processes, as well as providing biomass for local energy production. AGRONICKEL aims to implement agroecosystems which can lead to better soil resource efficiency and to offer a fully integrated, new agromining agriculture that could cover thousands of km2 in Europe and benefit local communities with sustainable rural development (Figure 1). AGRONICKEL has identified the bottlenecks that need to be solved before agromining fully develops in Europe. Traditional agronomy has already been developed for the Ni-hyperaccumulator Alyssum murale but a move towards a more resource-friendly agriculture is needed. Work Package (WP) 1 aims to design a new agroecological agronomy for hyperaccumulator plants in combination with agronomic practices (such as co-cropping/rotations, organic amendments, or biotechnological tools,..). The use of the plant biomass has to be thought of in terms of an integrated cycle. Thus, three uses have to be designed in WP2: potential use of these crops for energy purposes, the design of a wide array of nickel products to avoid dependance upon a specific niche market, and the production of Ca- and K-rich by-products which can be safely recycled in agromining fields (according to regulations). The full array of ecosystem services will be determined and optimised in WP3 and 4 (Life cycle assessment) so that the agromining chain can bring full value to local economies (bioeconomy) and provide green sources of energy and strategic metals, as well as maintaining or ameliorating the fertility of ultramafic regions (lowering Ni toxicity, enhancing fertility). Possible impacts concerning the use of local biodiversity, the exchange of gene pools, and pollination activities will be given full attention. The consortium associates the leaders of phytomining research in Europe and also includes one SME which has already started activity in this new promising field. Additionally, one SME and a start-up are ready to implement agromining using the technologies developed in AGRONICKEL.

In order to remediate the negative externalities caused by urbanization, urban planning policies are turning to developing productive and sustainable cities based on the development of nature in the city. The Bises project “Biodiversity of Urban soils in sustainable cities: state of art, interactions between productive/unproductive green spaces and ecosystem services provisions” aims to support this transition through an increase of soil ecology scientific knowledge in urban socio-ecosystems. These breakthroughs are necessary to set multifunctional green spaces. The project is based on a consortium constituted by academic labs ((UMR CEFE, UMR AgroEcologie Dijon, UMR LSE, UMR CESCO, UMR EPhor, UMR IEES-Paris, OSU ECCE Terra) and and a non governmental organization GO (Plante & Cité). It will be deployed in four french metropoles with different biopedoclimatic conditions (Paris, Nancy, Nantes and Montpellier). The main objective is to gain a better understanding of soil organisms in cities and particularly of the spatial and temporal dynamics in various urban land uses: private gardens, parks or urban farms. A challenge will be to evaluate the impact of practices but also colonization process on urban soil biodiversity functions and associated services (support, food production, biomass production, air/water regulation or biocontrol). The scientific originality of the project is based on: • The combination of all the soil fauna taxa (macro, meso and micro-fauna) and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), which has never been done before at a national scale. • The development and application of approaches based on the linkage of all soil taxa through the calculation of aggregated indicators or multi-phylum interaction webs. • The linkage of academic science and citizen science based on a co-construction at all steps of the scientific process and will help to access to private land uses, which represent an important part of urban green spaces. • A spatially explicit approach on soil biodiversity, which is still limited • The link between soil biodiversity properties, functions and ecosystem services. The scientific program is divided between a coordination Work-package (WP 0) and four-knowledge production WP’s. WP1 is dedicated to sampling design and sampled site selection. WP2 is dedicated to the use of the biodiversity indicators dashboard (biodiversity, functional biodiversity and functions). WP3 will develop aggregated indicators based on WP1 and WP2 outputs and will address the link between biodiversity and Ecosystem services. WP4 is dedicated to dissemination and various citizen science actions. Besides major advances in terms of basic research in soil ecology, macro ecology or functional ecology in urban landscapes, the project will lead to the validation of a dashboard of the biological quality of urban soils for the sustainable management of cities.

Plastic pollution might lead to the degradation of soils, with major environmental and economical costs for agriculture. Considering the multiple facets of plastic pollution (contaminant cocktails including additives and non-intentionally added substances NIAS, added alone in mulching or closely entangled with residual organic matter in amendments), this project will take a lead in assessing the extent of this threat and propose ways to remediate it. With a novel methodology based on a back and forth collaboration between polymer chemistry and soil ecology we will explore several exposure scenarios of soil organisms to custom-made plastics, deciphering their toxicity in different environmental compartments (rhizosphere, microorganisms, mesofauna, plastisphere), their impacts on soil functions and on biogeochemical cycles, their dynamics and that of plastic-associated microorganisms and the physico-chemical and microbial retroactions of soils on plastics.

Soils and wastes contaminated with heavy metals are prone to create major problems because of their toxicity and their management is generally expensive. But this drawback can be turn into advantage if these solid matrices contain compounds of industrial interest. However, metal concentrations are generally too low for conventional mining and metallurgical recovery. Hence, new extraction and processing technologies must be developed to ensure production of strategic metals, while preserving soil functions, and improving soil and waste quality by decreasing their toxicity. These processes would provide a range of economic, social and environmental values from materials and lands of initial low value. AGROMINE is the conception of agro-metallurgical production chains based on the culture of hyperaccumulator plants on contaminated matrices (soils, wastes) or naturally rich in metals (ultramafic soils) to produce high value metal compounds. These chains are developed for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co), metals of high strategic importance. They are based on a previous work devoted to the synthesis process of ammonium and nickel sulfate double salt hexahydrate (ANSH) from the biomass of Alyssum murale. They combine agromining (or phytomining) and hydrometallurgy. • Agromining is an alternative treatment for contaminated soils and wastes, and an application of phytotechnologies to exploit secondary resources. On soils naturally rich in metals it generates incomes for farmers or managers and metal removal improves soil (or matrix) quality. Here the main innovation is the production of hyperaccumulator plants on constructed agrosystems. • Hydrometallurgy produces metals with a niche strategy, seeking forms of Ni and Co of strong industrial interest. Focus is put here on Ni and Co carboxylates, which is completely innovative, but attention will still be given on Ni and Co salts for surface treatment. The AGROMINE project involves 4 research teams of Nancy (LRGP and CRPG, LIEC, LSE of Labex Ressources 21) and two SMEs (Soléo Services and Microhumus), which have a long collaboration history. It also has strong connections with joint activities between Labex Ressources 21 and ERAMET, a major French nickel mining company. ERAMET has expressed its interest for the project by providing a support letter. The consortium maintains regular contacts with the main international actors of phytomining: Albania (UAT), Québec (INRS-ETE), China (SYSU), Australia (CMLR-UQ) and the United States (USDA). Work is organized in 1 management task and 5 scientific tasks, including: 1. Characterization of matrices, including soils, sediments and sludge: new agrosystems containing metal contaminated matrices will be designed, characterized and prepared to grow hyperaccumulators; 2. Selection of hyperaccumulators and control of metal bioavailability to identify the best Ni and/or Co hyperaccumulators for each environmental condition and metal recovery; 3. Implementation of agromining at platform scale with constructed agrosystems; 4. Hydrometallurgy for metal recovery from biomass and production of high-value compounds, based on our experience on the patented synthesis of a Ni salt (ANSH), and focus on the preparation of Co salts and Ni and Co carboxylates; 5. Life Cycle Assessment and economic evaluation of the agromining chain as well as its transfer to the end-users. AGROMINE is intended to produce economic and social value from low value material and land. It is not planned to supplant conventional mining technologies. Contrary to popular belief, our field data have shown that this process makes profit: agromining on 4 000 ha producing 200 kg Ni ha-1 converted in ANSH would give an economic benefit of c.a. € 6.15 million per year. The results obtained in AGROMINE would be of great importance for the two SMEs and for the ECONICK start-up, which is currently in an incubating process in Nancy.

The PROOF project (Photovoltaic and Green ROOF) aims to compare roofing systems and their energy-environment impacts and performance with contrasting urban development scenarios, linked to the associated territorial challenges. It is particularly interesting to study an innovative combined system, combining an extensive green roof and a photovoltaic panel. To address this problem, PROOF brings together a consortium composed of Cerema, LEMTA, LMOPS, LSE, CSTB and Efficacity. It bases its scientific approach on four hypotheses that it intends to verify during the project: 1) Incident solar energy in summer dissipated by a green roof mainly in the form of latent heat fluxes, creates a decrease in the localized air temperature providing conditions favourable to the increase in electrical efficiency of a photovoltaic panel; 2) an extensive green roof with a structure capable of storing rainwater, promotes evapotranspiration flows and can therefore further improve the panel's efficiency; 3) at the building level, we assume that the overall energy balance (production/energy consumption per use + grey energy) is more advantageous for a combined system than for a standard bare or green flat roof; 4) compared to a conventional roof configuration, a combined system provides additional ecosystem services that can be assessed and valued at the neighbourhood level. To address these different hypotheses, PROOF is divided into four scientific tasks. The first is to provide all the data and characterizations needed for modelling heat exchange between the panel and the green roof, as well as for modelling heat transfer in the panel and its impact on performance. This task also provides comparison data for other roof configurations (standard, cool-roof and extensive green roof with rainwater storage). Both models are studied in detail in Task 2: contribution of radiative, convective and latent heat fluxes; evaluation of the temperature at the rear of the panel on the delivered power. The transition from system scale to building scale is addressed by Task 3, which assesses the thermal performance of different configurations at the building scale, but also the energy-environmental and ecological performance at both scales (devices and building) under different climatic conditions. The aim is to highlight the savings on consumption at the handset scale, improved efficiency, increased service life and at the building scale. Finally, Task 4 seeks to identify and evaluate the impacts and benefits associated with the types of devices tested, which are to be compared with the local challenges of the neighbourhoods, settings and urban areas in which they will be located.