Eco&Phy

Heads : Carole Bedos and Sébastien Saint-Jean

Our team is dedicated to studying the complex interactions between plants, soil, and the atmosphere.

In a world facing global changes (climate, land use) and within the framework of an agroecological transition, we seek to understand how agricultural ecosystems in a peri-urban environment function and adapt.

Our expertise lies at the crossroads of several disciplines:

• Environmental physics and chemistry
• Ecophysiology (the study of how plants function in response to the environment)
• Functional ecology

Our main objective is to address major challenges for our society:

• Climate and Agriculture: Understand how agricultural practices can mitigate climate change.
• Air Quality: Evaluate the impact of agriculture on air pollution and find levers to improve it.
• Ecosystem Health and Sustainability: Study the health and adaptation of plants to stress (diseases, pollutants, limited mineral fertilization) and the overall functioning of agroecosystems, from plant to landscape.

To meet these challenges, we combine cutting-edge experiments, both in the laboratory and in the field, with modeling approaches. This dual expertise allows us to decipher fundamental mechanisms and evaluate the impact of practices on a large scale.

Our work is organized around two major complementary research axes, ranging from the study of fundamental processes to the global evaluation of agricultural systems.

• Research Line 1: Functioning and exchanges in diversified agroecosystems  
• Research Line 2: Integrative approaches for multi-criteria evaluation of practices  

Experimental setups