Research engineer: Exploring the links between functional diversity and phenological responses to environmental conditions

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

Project description:

Leaf phenology, the study of the drivers and dynamics of leaf budburst, unfolding, maturation and senescence, is a key process of carbon, water and energy exchanges between forests and the atmosphere. Current approaches to modeling leaf unfolding and senescence rely mainly on the empirical link between leaf phenology and standardized air temperature. This simplified representation of leaf phenology does not allow us to correctly simulate the spatial and temporal variability of forest dynamics, nor to represent the impact of extreme events such as late frosts, droughts and heat waves. This is therefore one of the most significant sources of uncertainty in terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), resulting in significant biases in the representation of annual forest productivity and associated biogeochemical cycles (carbon, water, etc.).

In this context, we propose a 15 months research engineer position as part of the European ERC Starting LEAFPACE project which aims at developing new approaches to understand and simulate leaf phenology of forests across scales (tree/stand/region). Specifically, you will develop methods to investigate the hypothesis that higher functional diversity within plant communities stabilizes phenological responses to environmental conditions. This concept aligns with the idea of phenological complementarity, which proposes that diverse plant communities utilize resources more efficiently due to the asynchronous timing of growth and resource use among different species. Working in close collaboration with the researchers and PhD students involved in the project (several national and international teams), you will be asked to help developing methods and to investigate the following research objectives:

1. Quantify the relationship between functional diversity and the stability (efficiency of predictions based on environmental conditions alone of phenological responses to environmental variations across different ecosystems.
2. Assess the role of phenological complementarity in mediating ecosystem resilience to environmental change
3. Develop a species-level look-up table linking species identity, functional traits (ie from the TRY database), LAI (from pan-European LiDAR), and reflectance from sentinel-2 and phenocam imagery at ICOS sites.
4. Investigate if specific functional traits are clear predictors of differential phenological responses to environmental conditions

In addition to these specific tasks, you will be involved in assisting the team during field work and experiments (e.g. installing instruments, observations, protocol development). 

Training and skills

• Recommended training: Master in science or equivalent
• Knowledge required: Strong programming skills (R, Python, Fortran...), data analysis and modelling, knowledge of plant ecophysiology and functional ecology.
• Appreciated experience: Experience in handling different type of data (field observation, remote sensing, model outputs), as well as organizing field and lab work.
• Skills sought: Autonomy, ability to work in a team and collaborate, to write (scientific articles, synthesis) and express oneself (scientific conferences), ability to support trainees and PhD students.

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter