Most ecosystems are affected, intentionnally or unintentionnally, by Humans. While people wanted to control nature regardless ecological consequences, we acknowledge today that we have to evolve with the ecosystems to make them sustainable.
For example, floodplains have been intensively modeled by Humans in the past. Today, politics become aware that we have to give back a dynamics to these areas. A lot of restoration projects have been conducted in the last decades. The ECOS laboratory, though observational studies, aims at studying the success of such restoration and revitalisation in term of ecosystem dynamics and soil functioning.
In Madagascar, one of our projet studies a agricultural system, a slash and burn cultivation, to help local people to optimise their use of the ecosystem. Our aims is to keep this ecosystem as sustainable as possible.
We currently have three projects focusing on ecosystem management and restoration:
RECORD – Ecological and Hydrological Dynamics in the Restored Corridor of a River
REV’BIO – Effect of human impact on floodplain soil functioning
OPAL – Improving the management of oil palm landscapes across Asia, Africa and Latin America
