You will be welcomed in the Joint Research Unit Eco&Sols in Montpellier (France), which has 70 permanent staff from INRAE, IRD, Institut Agro Montpellier and Cirad. You will join the ALAMOD project, which aims to compare and improve models of carbon dynamics at the ecosystem level.Your mission will be to evaluate and improve the STICS model in simulating the soil organic matter dynamics. STICS is a soil-crop model that simulates crop growth, as well as the water, carbon, and nitrogen balances at the plot level. It is being developed by a community of scientists from different disciplines.You will be more specifically in charge of:Evaluating the STICS model’s ability to simulate the long-term dynamics of soil organic matter (carbon and nitrogen stocks) in a variety of agricultural situations, soils and climates. You will use a dataset from long-term experiments, which is under development in the ALAMOD project, and you will also help to complete it.Evaluating and improving the simulation of plant litter decomposition in the short and long term using the STICS model. You will modify and calibrate the decomposition module of STICS it to improve the model’s genericity and better account for certain situations (e.g. crop residues left on the soil surface, soil with a low mineral nitrogen availability, etc.). You will use a dataset gathering data on the decomposition of various plant litters under controlled (laboratory incubations) and field conditions. Modifications to the model formalisms will be carried out in collaboration with the IT pole of the STICS team.Writing publications.

Background and Aims Rhizodeposition, i.e. the release of organic matters by roots, constitutes a significant fraction of the plant carbon (C) budget and plays a key role in plant-soil interactions. Ho...

Context Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (G-AMF, Glomeromycotina) are well known for improving plant nutrition and resilience, yet their practical use in agriculture remains limited. Recent taxonomic reas...

Many microorganisms are auxotrophic, that is, unable to synthesize the compounds they require for growth. Here, Ramoneda et al. predict amino acid biosynthetic capabilities of over 26,000 bacterial ge...

Land use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning. Here the authors identify thresholds of grassland plant community structure and stability in response to la...

Soils are usually exposed to multiple global change factors (like warming or contamination by pollutants), but the response of soil communities to combined global change factors is poorly understood. ...

Cette semaine, Tiphaine Chevalier nous parle du sol qui respire et des 5 éléments nécessaires à sa santé.

Beneficial plant-microbe interactions are common in nature, but direct evidence for the evolution of mutualism is scarce. Here, Li et al. experimentally evolve a rhizospheric bacterium and find that i...

Plant litter-derived mineral-associated organic matter that formed in the first year and pyrogenic organic inputs both persist on a decadal scale in grassland soil via distinct mechanisms, according t...

Abstract. Soil contains a considerable fraction of Earth’s organic carbon. Bacterial growth and mortality drive the microbial carbon pump, influencing carb

Increasing species diversity in agroecosystems appears as a promising venue to restore or increase soil organic carbon (SOC). It has been hypothesized…

Root exudates play an important role in ecosystem carbon (C) cycling. Drought can alter the quality and quantity of root exudation, but it is not clea…

Analysis of metagenomes from across the globe reveals the spectrum of soil microbial functional diversity based on community aggregated traits.