Abstract: The workshop was called to define an overarching question to be answered by all Regional  Pilot Studies and to select from the existing studies those that fit best to the aims of  MACSUR. The question that evolved from the discussions is “What would be the different  contributions of different European adaptation strategies to ensure global food security  until 2050 at different scales (farm to EU) while keeping the GHG targets?” Workshop  participants agreed to use the newest climate simulations related to Representative  Concentration Pathways that were also used by the AgMIP and ISI-MIP projects. There was  also agreement to use a subset of the AgMIP scenarios (S2-S6) for impact assessments, with  AgMIP scenario S1 as the reference scenario, for details see Table 3 below. The selection  of Regional Pilot Studies was discussed separately for European Grand Regions, but there  was no concluding decision taken. The Project Steering Committee will finally decide on  showcase studies at a meeting in the first week of July based on characterisations sent in  by interested members. Questionnaires for characterising the Regional Pilot Studies will be  sent by the Hub to the regional contact persons mentioned in Table 2 to fill in. The  characterization list can be extended. The questionnaires should be filled in by the end of  June. Stakeholder meetings are planned for October 2013 in each region where  preliminary/sample outputs of the regional pilot studies should be presented. Results will  be presented at the mid-term meeting in April 2014. The last year of MACSUR is then  available to improve the studies.The geographic extent of the Regional Pilot Studies is  approximately county level – representing the area of the studies they are based on. The  Regional Pilot Studies will be linked within the grand regions (northern, central, southern  Europe) by consistent regional and continental Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAP).  These regional RAPs will feed into the RAP process underway at AgMIP. Through the  common RAPs the Regional Pilot Studies will reflect the common challenges of the greater  region and by having several Regional Pilot Studies the diversity of the environment,  farming systems, and political systems is represented. The workshop was a first step into  further planning and performing the Regional Pilot Studies that will fine-tune the results of  the workshop. No Label

Abstract: Report D-L1.4.1 provided an overview of the data and related resources available online and through EU funded projects, relating to soil organic carbon (SOC), and carbon sequestration in grasslands in particular. Building on D-L1.4.1, the report presented here discusses how meta-data describing these types of data (and experimental data more generally) can best be presented in an online resource useful to grassland modellers requiring data to use in their modelling work. Identifying the useful categories of meta-data is a necessary precursor to providing such a resource, which could facilitate better communication between modelling and experimental research groups, allowing researchers to more efficiently locate relevant data and to link up with other scientists working on similar topics. A survey among grassland modelling teams and an assessment of online meta-data resources was used to produce recommendations about the meta-data categories that should be included in an online resource. The categories are generic, so that the recommendations can be followed in the design of meta-data resources for the more general agricultural modelling community. No Label

Abstract: Various attempts have been made to determine the relative importance of uncertainties in climate change impact assessments stemming from climate projections and crop models, respectively, and to analyse yield outputs probabilistically. For example, in the ENSEMBLES project, probabilistic climate projections (Harris et al. 2010) have been applied in conjunction with impact response surfaces (IRS), constructed by using impact models, to estimate the future likelihood (risk) of exceeding critical thresholds of crop yield impact (see, Fronzek et al., 2011, for an explanation of the method). In this task, we aimed to further develop and operationalize these methods and testing them in different case study regions in Europe. The method combines results of a sensitivity analysis of (one or more) impact model(s) with probabilistic projections of future temperature and precipitation (Fronzek et al., 2011). Such an overlay is one way of portraying probabilistic estimates of future impacts. By further accounting for the uncertainties in crop and biophysical parameters (using perturbed parameter approaches), the outcome represents an ensemble of impact risk estimates, encapsulating both climate and crop model uncertainties. No Label