Project Work Packages
WP1 – Management and Coordination
This work package is concerned with the overall financial, administrative and operational management of the project as well as coordinating activities across work packages.
The specific objectives are:
- overall coordination
- to perform daily management of the project (monitoring of progress; communication with partners and with PRIMA-IS; financial management; reporting; decision making; conflict management)
- to ensure that all milestones and deliverables are successfully achieved and submitted
- to organise meetings and workshops and produce minutes of meetings (Annual General Assembly meetings, Executive Board meetings)
- to identify possible problems, evaluating their relevance and possible negative impacts and adopting actions for solving the problems
WP2 – Monitoring of experimental fields and hydrological basins
This WP answers two main proposal objectives:
OB1: to develop and implement innovative methodologies for EvapoTranspiration (ET) measurements in typical heterogeneous Mediterranean agrosilvopastoral systems and agricultural environments;
OB2: to improve the eco-hydrologic monitoring in ephemeral rivers and wadis along the Mediterranean biome and climate types, establishing a transnational Mediterranean river monitoring system.
WP3 – Ecohydrological modeling
This WP aims to:
- implement coupled VDM-LSM models to simulate land surface flux, energy flux, ET, infiltration, runoff formation, sm, CO2 budget, LAI dynamics of different species at the field scale,
- develop distributed ecohydrologic models with vegetation dynamics, and runoff and base flow propagation at the basin scale,
- identify a computationally-light and robust model for identifying the vegetation, climate and land use features crucial for the correct determination of the key ecohydrological variables.
WP4 – Remote sensing and data assimilation
This WP answers the following objectives:
OB3: to develop data assimilation systems for assimilating remotely sensed and field data into ecohydrological models at the watershed or agricultural district scales for optimal characterization of soil water balances (water content, storages and transfers) and the underlying water use efficiency;
WP5 – Analysis of land cover change strategies and climate change scenarios
It aims:
OB4: to identify the impacts of contrasting vegetation and crop types on the soil water balance, surface runoff, and water use under current and past Mediterranean climates;
OB5: to predict the impact of future climate scenarios on soil water balance, runoff, and water use;
OB6: to develop a set of land cover change strategies (e.g. forestations/deforestation, use of more water use efficient crops and woody vegetation) for climate change scenarios that optimize the use of water resources and increase the resilience of agricultural and agrosilvopastoral systems;
A further specifi objective of the WP is to analyze the precipitation and runoff gradient across the Mediterranean basins, and the effect of the typical Mediterranean precipitation seasonality on the runoff in the wide range of basins
WP6 – Development of water management and planning systems
The WP aims:
OB7: to improve the multipurpose and multiuser water resources management and planning systems for the optimization of the water infrastructure (e.g., reservoirs, groundwater recharge, water harvesting) and uses (irrigation, animal production systems, drinking and industrial activities), and management and planning under current and future climate change scenarios while preserving natural ecosystems.
WP7 – Quantifying benefits and sharing methodologies with stakeholders, dissemination and communication
The objective is:
OB7: to ensure the communication of project’s benefits to the stakeholder during the project progress and to implement the strategies to ensure efficient communication and dissemination. The specific objectives are:
- to develop, maintain and improve the project web site and web platform
- to promote and ensure the communication with stakeholders
- to disseminate information on SWATCH activities