NitroEurope - or NEU for short - is a project for integrated European research into the nitrogen cycle. NitroEurope is part of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, and will run for 5 years from February 2006 until 2011.
PhD fellowship in biosphere-atmosphere gas exchange modelling at INRA (France)
Submitted by agnieszka_eljasz on Thu, 20/08/2009 - 11:45.
We seek one motivated individual interested in employing process-based modelling approaches to investigate the role of canopy structure on ozone deposition in terrestrial ecosystems and its impacts on ecosystem productivity. The position will start in winter 2009 at the French institute for agronomical research (INRA)under the supervision of Dr.Jérôme Ogée and Dr. Benjamin Loubet.
Human-induced increases in the concentrations of tropospheric ozone tend to reduce the productivity of terrestrial ecosystems. Canopy structure (leaf area distribution, leaf clumping, leaf age distribution,...) and heterogeneity (stomatal aperture,...) are potentially important factors influencing ozone deposition and damage on vegetation. For example, recent studies looking at ozone effects on photosynthesis indicate that leaves of different ages are not equally sensitive to ozone exposure.
The project will make use of the multilayer, multi-leaf soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer model MuSICA (Ogée et al., Global Change Biology, 9, 697-717, 2003). This model describes the exchange of light, heat and other gases (water vapour, CO2) between the soil, the vegetation and the atmosphere. It explicitly accounts for the vertical structure of the vegetation and the clumping of leaves or needles within shoots of different ages, and incorporates a Lagrangian turbulent transfer scheme within the canopy, making it a very good tool for the proposed subject. The work will consist in implementing the transport, deposition and physiological impact of ozone into the model, validating these new parametrisations on existing datasets and performing model sensitivity analysis to explore the impacts of canopy structure. The project will benefit from a large flux database of ozone on different ecosystems (crops, forests, bare soil,...) in France, as well as results from ozone fumigation experiments to explore the effect of high ozone levels on the photosynthetic apparatus of leaves. Results from this work will be valuable to fundamental understanding of plants response to environmental changes and their impacts on ecosystem productivity.
Candidates interested in the above subject are invited to apply.
Applicants should have a solid background in soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer or ecophysiological modelling, good command of English and Fortran and effective written and oral communication skills.
For more information please contact Jérôme Ogée (jogee@bordeaux.inra.fr) and Benjamin Loubet (bloubet@grignon.inra.fr).
To be considered for the position, please send a resume and a short statement of your future research goals to Dr. Ogée and Dr. Loubet preferentially before September 15th, 2009.
