Senior IRD scientist at CESBI, ecohydrology and remote sensing.

Main activities

The objective of my research is to better understand and quantify water and energy transfers for the natural and agricultural lands in the Mediterranean and semi-arid zones through modeling and inversion, as well as the link between the vegetation and the water cycle, focusing on the evapotranspiration component.
The methods combine in-situ experimentation, modeling and the optimal use of multi-resolution multi-wavelength remote sensing.

The objective of my research is articulated at the three spatial scales of interest for managers (the plot, the region, the catchment area) and the time scales between dirunal variations (energy balance characteristics) and multi-year analysis (projections and impact of global change).

These different scales define three lines of research.

The first is concerned with the thermohydric functioning and the biomass production of the very heterogeneous crops from the point of view of their spatial organization (row crops, sparse vegetation, multi-layer systems, inter-rows, etc).

The second aims at the joint quantification of crop water requirements and real evapotranspiration; it is based on simplified schemes and models that offer the best tradeoff between their ability to represent the various processes and their ability to use (through data assimilation) the wide range of remote sensing data available now or in the near future.

Finally, the last axis aims to assess the evolution of water resources in the major Mediterranean regional watersheds in the face of global change.