05 Juin RESEARCHER IN LAND SURFACE AND CROP MODELING (M/F)
Context
Carbon farming practices and in particular those related to grassland management are key land management that might help mitigate climate change but robust monitoring, reporting, verification processes of the implementation of carbon farming practices is costly and is a barrier for farmers to change their practices.
The MRV4SOC project aims at designing a new, comprehensive, cost effective and robust Tier 3 approach accounting for changes in as many C pools as possible to estimate green-house gas (GHG) and full Carbon (C) budgets, couple C and Nitrogen (N) cycles, quantify C accumulation, and assess the results of traditional management practices and C farming. MRV4SOC seeks to assimilate high-quality in-situ and remote sensing (RS) data into geostatistical and process-based models in 14 Demo Sites (DS) covering 9 land use/cover (LULC) classes i.e., croplands, grasslands, pasture, agroforestry, forest, peatlands, wetlands, paludiculture and peri-urban areas subject to conversion. DS are located in different European and Associated Countries with heterogeneous abiotic and biotic conditions. The MRV4SOC methodology will account for different spatial levels (i.e., sub-landscape and landscape) and temporal scales (i.e., long-term experiments, new observations, and future climate change scenarios) to assess scalability, robustness, transparency, scalability, standardisation, and cost-effectiveness towards a European Union (EU) monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) framework for the land use land-use change and forestry sector (LULUCF).
Description
As part of the MRV4SOC project, we are offering a 24-month post-doctoral contract. The main scientific objectives and related tasks of the post will be to develop the ORCHIDEE continental surface model in order to improve its ability to represent grassland management and its interaction with soil carbon storage to better understand what role these practices can play in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
The post-doctoral fellow hired will first run the current version of the ORCHIDEE model on the project’s partner sites in order to assess its ability to represent soil carbon dynamics. A more explicit representation of grassland management will then be implemented in order to improve the model’s performance. Once these developments have been completed, simulations on a regional, national and possibly EU scale will be launched in order to estimate the biophysical soil carbon storage potential of these agricultural practices.
The data analysis and the modelling aspects are the responsibility of IPSL and the work will be supervised by Bertrand Guenet with strong interactions with the project partners. The activities will be mainly located at LGENS (ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France) as part of the Institut Pierre et Simon Laplace (IPSL), with some travels to Europe.
Contact • Bertrand Guenet • guenet@geologie.ens.fr
Required skills
- Thesis in climate sciences, agronomy biogeochemistry or soil sciences with a strong attraction for modeling.
- Computing langage skills required (R, python, or fortran).
- The candidate must have demonstrated his or her ability to communicate these results in scientific journals and international congresses.
Details
- Experience required: 2 to 7 years
- Expected date of employment: 1 October 2024
- Remuneration: from 2470 € to 3460 € depending on experience
- Application Deadline: 18 June 2024
IPSL & LGENS
IPSL employs over 300 permanent researchers, 200 technical and administrative staff, and over 450 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, spanning 30 nationalities. Their research mission is to contribute toward better understanding of the interactions between human activities in the Earth system, and the environment and climate dynamics at different timescales. The IPSL oversees the development of an Earth system model (IPSL-CM) of which ORCHIDEE is the land surface model (LSM). IPSL-CM is one of the ESMs contributing to the IPCC Assessment Reports.
Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute (IPSL) is a research cluster of nine institutes involved in climate change research, including Geology Laboratory of ENS (LGENS). IPSL coordinates the development of the Earth System model IPSL-CM, used for climate scenarios. Founded in 1880, the Geology Laboratory of the École normale supérieure de Paris is a joint research unit (UMR 8538) with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). With a long tradition in Earth and Environmental Sciences, the research carried out there covers a wide field which makes it a privileged place for exchanges at thematic borders. CNRS is the legal entity that represents the LGENS within this project.
Non-discrimination, openness and transparency: our institution, is committed to supporting and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion within its communities. We encourage applications from a variety of backgrounds, which we will select through an open and transparent recruitment process.