– Abstract submission and registration are closed now  – 

A detailed meeting schedule of talks is given in this pdf: 
Programme schedule

The workshop will take place in the historical building (north building) of Hannah Arendt campus in central Avignon in the following rooms:
2E07 (the main room, a small amphitheatre)
2E12 (for short course, coffee breaks, luggage and breakout sessions)
2E06 (for breakout sessions)

We propose a three-day interdisciplinary workshop on extreme events in agriculture and forestry at

Avignon University (on the central Hannah Arendt Campus),
from Tuesday June 9th to Thursday June 11th, 2026.

We aim to bring together researchers from the fields of agronomy, climate science, forestry, physics, risk management and statistics. Through a series of invited talks, this workshop addresses challenges, methods and applications related to modeling, simulation and impact assessment of adverse events for plants and harvests, including drought, extreme heat, excessive precipitation, and combinations of such events during the phenological cycle. 

The workshop will feature:

• Invited and contributed talks.
• A short course with practicals on Tuesday morning:
  Statistical distribution models for extreme events – Why and how to use them?
• Breakout sessions on Thursday morning.
  They will be dedicated to establishing a list of "Unsolved problems" in the context of the workshop topics, to be published as one of the outcomes of the workshop.

This event is organized by the target project CLIMATHS of the French national research priority project Maths VivES, in collaboration with the Chair of Geolearning, the Chair CARE and the project LOST OXIGEN of INRAE's CLIMAE metaprogramme. 

Focus topics:

AI methods for impact assessment in agriculture and forestry
Climate indicators
Compound events and risks
Extreme value theory 
Heatwaves and droughts
Interactions between biotic and abiotic stresses
Models for the phenology and ecophysiology of plants
Physical processes and climate dynamics
Rare-event algorithms
Stochastic weather generators for impact assessment

Denis Allard (BioSP–INRAE)
MSTWeathergen, a multivariate spatio-temporal Stochastic Weather Generator: elements of validation for some extreme patterns

Maël Aubry (Agroclim–INRAE)
Evolution of decennial extreme ecoclimatic events in agriculture: a GAMLSS–copula approach

Freddy Bouchet (LMD–IPSL)
tba

Gloria Buritica (MIA Paris Saclay, AgroParisTech)
Extreme value statistics for environmental time series

Dim Coumou (VU Amsterdam)
The climate fingerprint behind multiple breadbasket failures

Iñaki Garcia de Cortazar Atauri, Marie Launay (Agroclim–INRAE)
Modelling the impact of extreme events on agricultural production: what our models can and cannot (yet) do

Christelle Hély (EPHE–PSL, ISEM – University of Montpellier)
Extreme events and forest disturbances : Shifting regimes and the evolving Climate-Forest-Human nexus

Arthur Hrast Essenfelder (European Commission Joint Research Centre)
Expert-driven explainable artificial intelligence for the detection of multiple climate-related hazards relevant for agriculture

Olivier Lopez (ENSAE Paris)
Parametric insurance: statistical challenges and ability to insure extreme risks

Yueling Ma (Institute of Bio- and Geosciences – Forschungszentrum Jülich)
Improved Modeling of Groundwater Droughts in Europe Using Artificial Intelligence

Yoann Robin (LSCE–IPSL)
Heat and Cold Waves, Past, Present and Future Events

Kate Saunders (Monash University, Melbourne)
The spatial representativeness of in-situ stations and why this matters for climate extremes and agricultural applications

Provisional schedule:

Tuesday 9h00-12h00 Short course
Tuesday 13h30-18h00 Presentations
Wednesday 9h00-18h00 Presentations
Wednesday 19h30 Conference dinner
Thursday 9h00-12h00 Presentations and breakout sessions
Thursday 13h30-16h15 Presentations and closing 

A detailed programme is given in this pdf: Programme schedule

We welcome the submission of abstracts for contributed talks until March 31st. Submitted abstract will be peer-reviewed and authors will be informed about acceptance by the end of April.

Please provide a title and a short abstract (not more than 300 words) and submit them by the submission form. 

Talks should be related to the above focus topics of the workshop.

The systems requires that you register to submit an abstract. Note that it will be possible to cancel your registration later if your abstract is not retained. 

We propose a short course with practicals on Tuesday morning (approximately 9h00-12h00):

Statistical distribution models for extreme events – Why and how to use them ?

This short course will give a gentle introduction to the theoretical foundation and statistical estimation in univariate statistical extreme-value analysis: Generalized Extreme-Value distributions for maxima, Generalized Pareto distributions for threshold exceedances, clustered extreme events, and more recent approaches such as Extended Generalized Pareto distributions. The statistical implementation will be illustrated on climate series data using specialized R packages in the practical sessions.

Instructors: Viviana Carcaiso (Lead), Thomas Opitz. Tbc.

Thomas Opitz (INRAE)
Freddy Bouchet (CNRS, ENS/PSL, LMD–IPSL)
Viviana Carcaiso (BioSP–INRAE)
Aurélie Fischer (LPSM, Université Paris Cité)
Carina Furusho-Percot (Agroclim–INRAE)
David Métivier (MISTEA-INRAE)
Julien Ruffault (URFM–INRAE)
Pascal Yiou (LSCE–IPSL)

Abstract submission: until 31 March 2026 April 22nd
Notification of acceptance: until 30 April 2026
Registration for workshop and short course: until 10 May 2026

In case you have questions about the conference, you can contact us by email using the following address: extremes2026 AT sciencesconf DOT org