Job offers 2023

Junior researcher in physical oceanography (M/F)

Understanding the vulnerability and resilience of coral reef ecosystems of Andaman and Nicobar Islands to climate change

The recruited person will be responsible for developing a high-resolution spatial model (horizontal mesh less than 100 m from the coast) for the simulation of three-dimensional ocean circulation around the Nicobar and Andamans Islands, and to carry out simulations of this circulation, if possible validated, for at least 3 consecutive years and to value them in one publication.

https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR8222-KATGUI0-002/Default.aspx?lang=EN

The LECOB project concerns nearshore to deep sea areas, focusing on benthic environments which are frequently disturbed, such as sedimentary and rocky grounds in the Mediterranean coastal zone, submarine canyons or hydrothermal vents. All these systems meet the EBSA (Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas) criteria defined from the Aichi Target 11 and our research is intimately linked with the need to anticipate their driver of changes within global change context (climate stressors and ocean acidification, physical disturbances and pollutant accumulation) in a conservation perspective. Such a variety of marine environments enables the LECOB to continue to test various classical or more recent ecological concepts.

The LECOB organizes its activities for the period 2019-2023 along 3 transverse axes , promoting interdisciplinary integration.

Axis 1 : Marine benthic assemblages dynamics.

Axis 2 : Habitat-functions relationships associated to ecosytem-engineers.

Axis 3 : Response to stress from individuals to communities.

Macrobenthos assemblages are widely used as indicators of environmental changes, as they integrate environmental changes due to their low mobility at the adult stage and rather long life expectancy. Their use is of particular importance in regulatory assessments of marine water quality status and environmental impact assessment studies. However, the prevalence of a complex life cycle with a dispersive larval stage among benthic invertebrates complicates the correlation between local environmental conditions and local assemblages.

For instance, larval dispersal by unsteady ocean flows potentially reshapes species spatial distribution and population structure at each reproduction. Such redistribution of individuals at regional scale is frequently observed in the micro-tidal Mediterranean Sea where variable meterological forcings dominate.

Hence, it appears essential to debias observations of macrobenthos assemblages from such a blurring effect. Moreover, macrobenthos assemblages tightly interact with meio- and microbial-assemblages, particularly in sedimentary environment where organic matter accumulation is a dominant driver of benthic diversity. To this end, a series of complementary research activities have been engaged in the LECOB during the previous period and will be continued, which involves benthic assemblage observations (long-term time series and distribution mapping), the evaluation and development of biotic indices, the characterization of the "resource-communities" eco-geochemical feedback loops and the evaluation and development of regional connectivity hindcasts.