MAELIA

  SLAM-B aims to consolidate and significantly expand the functionalities of the MAELIA platform, so as to implement IAM approaches on a regional scale.

MAELIA is a multi-agent platform for integrated modeling and evaluation of agricultural territories and territorialized bioeconomy systems.

This platform has been developed by INRAE for 12 years, and in collaboration with CIRAD for 5 years.

Initially focused on territorial water management, it now aims to enable integrated assessment of territorialized bioeconomy systems (e.g. [1]). MAELIA offers the potential to represent, on a daily time step, the interactions between biomass production, processing and recycling activities, ecological processes linked to biogeochemical cycles (water, N and C), crop growth and socio-economic performance, taking into account climate and agricultural price variability. Crop management strategies involving cover management (annual and perennial crops and intermediate cover), mineral and organic fertilization (e.g. organic inputs), irrigation and residue management are explicitly represented. Developments carried out as part of the PROTERR and BESTS projects (funded by ADEME) and PEI PARTAGE have enabled MAELIA to integrate an explicit representation of the structure and dynamics of organic residual product (ORP) chains, as well as a dynamic version of the SYS-METHA model [2], which represents the operation of methanizers and simulates the production of energy, digestate (quantity and quality) and associated N2O and NH₃ emissions.

MAELIA enables the evaluation of a wide range of performances over a multi-year period, from plot level to territorial scale, via socio-economic indicators (semi-net margin, working time, production, etc.), agro-environmental indicators (nitrate leaching, ammonia emissions, frequency index, GHG emissions, etc.) and ecosystem services (nitrogen supply, water quality regulation, C storage, soil quality, etc.). These indicators can be analyzed dynamically in order to assess the resilience/vulnerability of associated performances to climate (past or future) and/or price variability.

MAELIA is modular and, by activating models and modeling options, enables the definition of a modeling solution adapted to the issues to be addressed in a given territory. MAELIA has been applied in a variety of French territories and in Saxony, Germany, to address issues relating to territorial water management [3-6], territorial crop-livestock systems [7], territorial ORP management [1] and the development of agroecological systems [7-8] on a territorial scale.

The modeling and evaluation work carried out on the French and European scales will draw on a wide range of modeling methods, and will aim to lay the foundations for the deployment of MAELIA beyond the territorial scale, towards the national and EU scales.

References

[1]         Misslin R, Clivot H, Levavasseur F, Villerd J, Soulié J-C, Houot S, et al. Integrated assessment and modeling of regional recycling of organic waste. Journal of Cleaner Production 2022;379:134725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.134725.

[2]         Bareha Y, Affes R, Moinard V, Buffet J, Girault R. A simple mass balance tool to predict carbon and nitrogen fluxes in anaerobic digestion systems. Waste Management 2021;135:47–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2021.08.020.

[3]    Martin E, Gascoin S, Grusson Y, Murgue C, Bardeau M, Anctil F, et al. On the Use of Hydrological Models and Satellite Data to Study the Water Budget of River Basins Affected by Human Activities: Examples from the Garonne Basin of France. Surv Geophys 2016;37:223–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9366-2

[4]    Mazzega P, Therond O, Debril T, March H, Sibertin-Blanc C, Lardy R, et al. Critical multi-level governance issues of integrated modelling: An example of low-water management in the Adour-Garonne basin (France). Journal of Hydrology 2014;519:2515–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.09.043 .

[5]    Tribouillois H, Constantin J, Casal L, Villerd J, Therond O. Introducing and expanding cover crops at the watershed scale: Impact on water flows. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 2022;337:108050. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.108050 .

[6]    Therond O, Gaudou B, Sibertin-Blanc C, Amblard F, Auda Y, Arcangeli J-P, et al. The MAELIA multi-agent platform for integrated assessment of low-water management issues. vol. 8235, Springer; 2014, p. 85–110.

[7]    Catarino R, Therond O, Berthomier J, Miara M, Mérot E, Misslin R, et al. Fostering local crop-livestock integration via legume exchanges using an innovative integrated assessment and modelling approach based on the MAELIA platform. Agricultural Systems 2021;189:103066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103066 .

[8]    Tribouillois H, Constantin J, Murgue C, Villerd J, Therond O. Integrated modeling of crop and water management at the watershed scale: Optimizing irrigation and modifying crop succession. European Journal of Agronomy 2022;140:126592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2022.126592.