Structuring themes (ST)

Scientific output

The creation of ECOSYS in 2015 was based  on the desire to pool skills and approaches to contribute to the characterization of the ecosystem services provide by agroecosystems. It is this pooling that constitutes the heart and the justification of ECOSYS, which is organized based on transversal axes corresponding to the various services detailed below. The objectives of ECOSYS and examples of the highlights attached to these activities are given, completing the specific activities of the unit’s teams.

• Production service
• Organic waste recycling service
• Biodiversity maintenance service
• Climate Regulation Service
• Regulation of Environmental compartment quality service
• Integration approaches for the environmental assessment of ecosystem services

Scientific stategy and project

The scientific teams and the technical poles will feed a small number of structuring themes, which are outputs and true ECOSYS business card and operational justification of the assembly of the scientific and technical skills in the unit. The objective of the unit project is to make these structuring themes more visible, using them to meet operational objectives in the short to medium term (in the next 5 years). These final structuring themes are not exclusive, they feed on the activities of teams that will continue to develop more or less specific research on other related topics.

These themes, as the whole activity of the unit, are placed in a general context of global changes where the climate and the metropolization are two main driving forces. The agroecology approaches and concepts will be mobilized to study the interactions exposure–health, the different aspects of the agroecosystems multifunctionality and the responses to climate change (Fig. 26). The unit localization makes possible to place most of works in an urbanization gradient going from field crops agroecosystems to urban agriculture. Thus, the periurban context, associated to the metropolization dynamics, will be for us a determinant driving

• ST1. Climate change and agroecosystems: mitigation and adaptation
• ST2. Managing, producing and recycling biomasses for multiple purposes
• ST3. Exposure to and effects of contaminants in agroecosystems
• ST4. Diversity from field to landscape for a resilient agroecosystem with limited impact