Methodological Guide to Co-design Climate-smart Options with Family Farmers

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) seeks to improve productivity for the achievement of food security (pillar 1: Productivity), to develop a better ability to adapt (pillar 2: Adaptation), and to limit greenhouse gas emissions (pillar 3: Mitigation). Technical and organizational innovations are needed to find synergies among those three pillars. Innovation (its creation and its operation) is a social phenomenon. Many studies worldwide have shown that promoting a sustainable change and innovation within organizations has to be analyzed and implemented with stakeholders. Thus, the ability of local actors to tackle climate change and mitigate its effects will depend on their ability to innovate and mobilize material and non-material resources, to articulate links among national policies, not only between themselves, but also undertaking actions at the local level. To support stakeholders in the development of responses to this challenge, we propose the development of open innovation platforms, in which all local actors may participate. These platforms are virtual, physical, or physico-virtual spaces to learn, jointly conceive, and transform different situations; they are generated by individuals with different origins, different backgrounds and interests (Pali and Swaans, 2013).The purpose of this manual is to provide a seven-step methodology to allow family farmers to co-build and adopt CSA options to tackle climate change in an open innovation platfor

On modeling of thermal embrittlement in PWR steels using the local approach to fracture

International audienceExperiments on Charpy and CT specimens were carried out on one heat of A533B steel under two conditions: (i) as received, and (ii) thermally aged (450°C - 5000h). A shift of the ductile to brittle transition temperature (DBTT) was measured after aging. In both cases SEM observations showed that fracture occurred both by intergranular and transgranular cleavage fracture modes when the materials were tested at sufficiently low temperature. Detailed examinations revealed that intergranular fracture was associated with micro-segregated zones, enriched in carbon and phosphorus. A recent model developed by the authors for predicting the fracture toughness of inhomogeneous materials was applied to describe the large scatter related to the bimodal failure modes observed in both conditions and the DBTT shift after aging. It is shown that thermal aging produces a slight decrease of the critical cleavage stress (due to the crossing of grain boundaries embrittled by phosphorus segregation) and a larger decrease of the critical intergranular fracture stress. The McLean-Guttmann- Militzer model is used to predict the kinetics of segregation during aging. An attempt is made to show how these results can be used to model DBBT variations under in-service conditions

Constraints on effusive cryovolcanic eruptions on Europa using topography obtained from Galileo images

Images of Europa's surface taken by the Galileo Solid State Imager (SSI) show smooth features measuring a few kilometers, potentially resulting from eruptions of low-viscosity material such as liquid cryomagma. We estimated the volume of four of these smooth features by producing digital elevation models (DEMs) of four Galileo/SSI images. We used the shape-from-shading technique with special care to estimate the uncertainties on the produced DEMs and estimated feature volumes to be between ($5.7*10^{7}$ m$^{3}$ and ($2.7*10^{8}$ m$^{3}$. We discussed the implications for putative sub-surface liquid reservoir dimensions in the case of eruptions induced from freezing reservoirs. Our previous cryovolcanic eruption model was improved by considering a cycle of cryomagma freezing and effusion and by estimating the vaporized cryolava fraction once cryolava spreads onto Europa's surface. Our results show that the cryomagma reservoirs would have to be relatively large to generate these smooth features (1 to 100 km$^{3}$ if the flow features result from a single eruption, and 0.4 to 60 km$^{3}$ for the full lifetime of a reservoir generating cyclic eruptions). The two future missions JUICE (ESA) and Europa Clipper (NASA) should reach Europa during the late 2020s. They shall give more information on those putative cryovolcanic regions which appear as interesting targets that could provide a better understanding of the material exchanges between the surface, sub-surface and ocean of Europa

Influence of P and C intergranular segregation during manufacturing and ageing on the fracture toughness of nuclear pressure vessel steels

International audienceMechanical tests on Charpy and CT specimens of a low alloy MnNiMo steel under two conditions, as received and thermally aged, revealed a shift of the ductile to brittle transition temperature. In this paper, an approach based on the combination of local fracture mechanics and segregation kinetics is proposed in order to describe this shift

Co-designing climate-smart farming systems with local stakeholders: A methodological framework for achieving large-scale change

The literature is increasing on how to prioritize climate-smart options with stakeholders but relatively few examples exist on how to co-design climate-smart farming systems with them, in particular with smallholder farmers. This article presents a methodological framework to co-design climate-smart farming systems with local stakeholders (farmers, scientists, NGOs) so that large-scale change can be achieved. This framework is based on the lessons learned during a research project conducted in Honduras and Colombia from 2015 to 2017. Seven phases are suggested to engage a process of co-conception of climate-smart farming systems that might enable implementation at scale: (1) “exploration of the initial situation,” which identifies local stakeholders potentially interested in being involved in the process, existing farming systems, and specific constraints to the implementation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA); (2) “co-definition of an innovation platform,” which defines the structure and the rules of functioning for a platform favoring the involvement of local stakeholders in the process; (3) “shared diagnosis,” which defines the main challenges to be solved by the innovation platform; (4) “identification and ex ante assessment of new farming systems,” which assess the potential performances of solutions prioritized by the members of the innovation platform under CSA pillars; (5) “experimentation,” which tests the prioritized solutions on-farm; (6) “assessment of the co-design process of climate-smart farming systems,” which validates the ability of the process to reach its initial objectives, particularly in terms of new farming systems but also in terms of capacity building; and (7) “definition of strategies for scaling up/out,” which addresses the scaling of the co-design process. For each phase, specific tools or methodologies are used: focus groups, social network analysis, theory of change, life-cycle assessment, and on-farm experiments. Each phase is illustrated with results obtained in Colombia or Honduras