ICOS

ICOS is a distributed research infrastructure (European Research Infrastructure Consortium or ERIC; https://www.icos-cp.eu) that provides harmonized and accurate measurements of greenhouse gas concentrations and fluxes across the European continent. The French component (ICOS France, IR*) of the European ICOS infrastructure comprises 16 atmospheric stations, 18 ecosystem stations, the atmospheric thematic center coordinated by LSCE, and the soil and vegetation analysis component coordinated by INRAE. Since 2020, Benjamin Loubet, DR EcoSys has been coordinator of the INRAE ICOS infrastructure, and as such is a member of the executive committee of the national IR* ICOS infrastructure with CEA, CNRS and UVSQ, which coordinates the network and organizes an annual general meeting and a bi-annual national conference.

EcoSys monitors an ICOS ecosystem station (FR-Gri) located on a plot at the AgroParisTech Grignon farm, with a succession of wheat, intercropping, corn, barley (rapeseed) crops. The station has been operational since 2005, and will be accredited ICOS in 2021, thanks to the work of the dedicated technical team (1 IR and 1 AI on 50%). In addition to its anchorage in the European ICOS community, the unit's strategy has been to make this carbon observation site a playground for experiments on reactive compounds (O3, NOx, N2O, VOCs, pesticides), and the development of methods and models for greenhouse gas and reactive compound exchange.