DIGIT, GASPS, DEBRIS and DUNES: four HERSCHEL Open Time Key Programs to survey the dust cycle in circumstellar disks

Four accepted HERSCHEL open time key programs, DIGIT, GASPS, DEBRIS and DUNES, will study the evolution of the dust grains in circumstellar disks around young and Main Sequence stars. There is a strong implication of the french community in these four projects which represent a total of 930 hours (>38 days) of her\ observing time. The DIGIT and GASPS projects will focus on the first stages of planet formation, while the DEBRIS and DUNES projects will search for extra-solar Kuiper Belt analogs around nearby Main Sequence stars. In this paper, we give an overview of the scientific goals of the four projects and of the numerical tools that we will be providing to the teams to model and interpret the her\ observations from these programs.