Pressures linked to global change have led to dramatic ecosystem evolution over the past 50 years. Even more important changes are predicted for the coming decades. In the Mediterranean region rapid increase in population and extreme climatic events that affect water resources and human safety are of particular concern. Adaptation will require enormous effort and there is therefore a need to prioritize the problems and propose acceptable technical and political measures to overcome these difficulties. 
A joint programme is being developed in Avignon, France, by a network of INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) and UAPV (Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse) research laboratories in the field of Adaptation to Global Change (AGC programme). This program focuses on the impact of land use and climatic change on natural and cultivated ecosystem biodiversity, productivity and water resources. The target area is limited to the Mediterranean. Expected results are: i) the development of global change scenarios, ii) the establishment of test territory in West Provence (observations, data base) dedicated to characterization of changes, iii) the implementation of integrated models (linking socio economic and bio-geophysic aspects) to design adaptation measures and evaluate their impact, and iv) the development of indicators to support early warning systems.

► Four research foci: 

1) Global change in the future: develop global change scenarios and model the selective pressures they may exert on ecosystems; study their spatial distribution and their probability of occurrence.
2) Dynamics of biological systems in a changing environment: quantify and predict spatial dynamics in natural and cultivated ecosystems, characterize the resilience and the adaptive capacity of the ecosystems.
3) Water resource dynamics and impact on ecosystems: evaluate ecosystem services (biomass production, water purification, climate regulation,...) and their evolution.
4) Adaptation: define possible measures of adaptation and their evolutionary potential. 

► Five research capacities: 

1) A wide range of natural and cultivated systems in the Mediterranean region are included within the research program; including Mediterranean forests, horticultural crops (vegetable and fruit), vineyards, field crops, and grassland.
2) Multidisciplinary expertise is locally available in biology (trees, insects, bacteria and viruses, from the individual to population and community level), physics of the environment (soil, atmosphere, water resources, wildland fires) and social sciences (evolution of land-uses, implementation of agri-environmental policy).
3) The research program is focused on processes (biology of target species, population dynamics, biogeochemical cycles and transfer in the environment) and the progressive integration of the impact of climate change on these processes.
4) Modelling of spatio-temporal processes, from local to landscape and regional scale and from year to centennial time scale, will be based on the analysis of current and historical georeferenced datasets.
5) A local network of long term study sites is shared by the different research groups, which defines a “research territory” and provides spatial integration of the research.