Study of socioecological trajectories at the scale of major catchment areas: example of the Seine river basin, PIREN Seine program (GEOSCIENCES)

Faced with global change, it is now critical to identify mitigation and adaptation avenues. The numerous challenges include ensuring future access to water, food and energy, to ensure that local societies can function, and that they can do so at the lowest cost in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In the Anthropocene epoch, the drivers of change result from changes in social practices. When it comes to water and food, short circuits are the obvious choice. The spatial scale for implementing these changes is now clearly identified as local territories, which dialogue with each other through the catchment areas of life formed by water catchment areas.

ThePIREN Seine program takes an interdisciplinary approach that involves a method, coupled with a staging of practices, and an evaluation of their impacts using numerical modeling. To achieve this, Mines Paris – PSL is developing the software ProSe-PA and CaWaQS, which can simulate the water cycle, including groundwater resources, and the quality of the associated water. It can be used to evaluate the impacts of IPCC forecasts on the water in the Seine river basin, and the impact of changes in farming practices or the management of urban wastewater on water quality.

Current developments in these tools involve simulating heat flows in hydro systems. This will open up perspectives for coupling with questions related to the energy transition from a systemic point of view, such as the development of geothermal energy and storage of energy in saline cavities.

Prisms of analysis

TTI.5 contacts

Nicolas FLIPO, GEOSCIENCES – Mines Paris

Partners

Funding