The IRONWOMAN project aim to validate the hypothesis of the primordial role of marine iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) in promoting the development of iron-rich mats, and impacting the iron biogeochemical cycle and the primary production in the deep oceans, according to the variations of the environmental conditions at play. For this purpose, we propose to carry out 1) in situ sampling of iron-rich mats through either punctual annual sampling or deployments of colonization experiments, and a newly developed nucleic acids and fluids sampler instrument enabling monthly collection; 2) continuous monitoring of physico-chemical environmental conditions at two contrasted deep-ocean environments of EMSO Azores (Atlantic hydrothermal site) and EMSO West Ligure (Mediterranean deep coastal plain), taking advantage of their status of deep-sea observatory (IR EMSO France); and 3) geochemical, isotopic, mineralogical, cultural and microbiological multi-omics analyses. Through these multidisciplinary and long-term approaches and instrumental development, the IRONWOMAN project would have an impact on better knowledge of ocean microbial biodiversity and its response to global environmental changes that could impact dO2 and dFe in deep ocean. To achieve our research objective, the work plan will be carried out by a consortium of complementary research team from four national institutions (MIO Marseille, GET Toulouse, URA-OMP Toulouse and LGE Marne La Vallée). The project is divided into five work packages: WP0-Management, to ensure the coordination between partner and the results dissemination; WP1-Sampling and Instrumentation, to ensure sampling and in situ experiments during the annual cruises but also the development of the FLUICS instrument; WP2-Characterization of environmental conditions to characterize the physico-chemical conditions surrounding iron-rich microbial mats; WP3-Biological characterization of mats, to characterize the microbial composition present in iron-rich mats, the active microbial species and their functioning via OMICS approaches; and WP4-Ex situ enrichment culture of microbial mats, to investigate the influence of dFe and dO2 variations on the functioning of microbial mats and iron acquisition pathways. The IRONWOMAN project will be the first dedicated multidisciplinary and long-term approach (relying on TGIR FOF and IR EMSO-France, the French node of the European infrastructure EMSO which is a legal entity under European law ERIC) conducted on entire microbial mats, leading to a full coverage of the complex interactions between them and their environment. Therefore, a combined strategy between in situ colonization through the development of a new device FLUICS and in vitro cultures, will allow us to improve our knowledge on the formation and evolution of iron-rich microbial mats with regards to environmental forcing. Through this topic, The IRONWOMAN project enters within the ANR research axis 1.2 “Terre Vivante”. Indeed, it addresses part of the objectives of the United Nations Ocean Decade (2021-2030) by developing a better knowledge and understanding of the ocean in order to protect and restore the ecosystem and biodiversity. Furthermore, by developing the FLUICS instrument, disseminating our results and dropping off the physico-chemical and sequencing data at databases, it will contribute to the expansion of the global ocean observing system, another objective of the Decade of the Oceans. This project will provide data to define the role of FeOBs as an actor in the iron cycle for primary production in deep waters, on two deep marine sites with different environmental conditions, and the interaction between iron, carbon and nitrogen cycles inside the mats. From its title (IRONWOMAN) to the organization of its Consortium and Work Plan, the IRONWOMAN project is fully gender-sensitive. A total budget of €552k is requested for 48 months, including 60 months of staff support, divided between the partners.

Scientific communities produce a valuable amount of data as a direct or side product of their research, which can be potentially explored in many different applications. However, making data open and accessible requires considerable efforts in order to guarantee the data quality and compliance to the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability). The aim of Semantics4FAIR is to facilitate the tasks of finding and accessing scientific data that results from both research and production by a scientific community, in order to support the development of new usages by other scientific communities. The originality of the proposed approach is twofold: (i) a human factor method to capture user’s needs and vocabularies; and (ii) a semantic approach takes up the findability challenge. We plan to build and reuse several ontologies to account for the various points of view on the data and the relations between these views: one ontology will account for the data producers’ view, and the users’ vocabulary refers to a different ontology. These ontologies will be then used to describe the data, its provenance and usages, and will be the basis for the development of services querying and consuming data. This work will rely on the collaboration of a computer science lab (IRIT) and a human-factor institute (MSH-T) with scientific communities that want to make their datasets FAIR, and scientific communities that want to reuse this data for their own research projects. We propose to test the approach thanks to a joint work with the atmospheric scientific community (OMP and CNRM) as meteorology data providers, and the Palynologist community (GET) and meteorology data exploitation (MeteoFrance) services as two data user communities.

While the heat wave impacts on public health have been widely addressed in developed countries especially after the intense event over West Europe during summer 2003, no effort has been made to detect them and evaluate their impacts in least developed countries, and especially Africa where the climate is warmer and adaptation capacities are low. Over West Africa preliminary interviews, climate and epidemiologic analyses show however that this problem is emerging. Moreover climate projections in this area indicate that such events should increase in frequency and intensity in the near future. However these climate models display huge biases in their mean state over this region, and recent studies highlighted large radiative and low-level temperature biases. In order to provide robust information on the future evolution of heat waves, it is necessary to reduce as much as possible these biases. Starting from this context, the main objective of ACASIS is to set-up a pre-operational heat wave warning system over West Africa tailored to health risks of the population living in this region. This is a demonstration project focused on Senegal and Burkina where national weather services have already started developing products dedicated to weather/climate and health relationships, and where several health and demographic observatories have been operating for up to several decades. Based on qualified meteorological, climate and demographic data bases, firstly, the dynamics of the heat wave events and their atmospheric patterns will be determined, as well as their evolution over the last decades. Their predictability at short and medium ranges will be evaluated on ensembles of multi-models forecasts outputs. On a longer time scale, control simulations and climate scenarios of the CMIP5/AR5 database will be analysed and the simulated future evolution and associated uncertainty of these events will be evaluated. More precisely the processes at the origin of model radiative biases will be examined and reduced as much as possible. In parallel, epidemiologic studies associated with interviews will be conducted in the health and demographic sites in Senegal and Burkina in order to evaluate the physiologic and social vulnerability of the African population to high temperature extremes. It will allow to define tailored bio-meteorological indicators to be used in the warning system. From these outcomes and by implementing downscaling to link the synoptic scale of the heat waves to local bio-meteorological indicators, we will set-up a demonstration warning system on a “testbed” platform named MISVA, already implemented as the result of a prior collaboration between Meteo-France, OMP and ANACIM, the meteorological agency of Senegal. Based on the interviews, and with the setting of several workshops with stakeholders and public institutions, we will be able to provide specific recommendations associated to these warnings. An implementation in the Meteo-France operational system at the end of the project or after might be possible. To carry on this project, a pluri-disciplinary consortium has been set-up gathering climatologists, physical processes specialists, meteorologists, biostatisticians, demographers, socio-economists, epidemiologists, geographers, and operational meteorological agencies. It will work through a close collaboration between French and African teams where young African researchers will be highly involved.