The FastForest group measures and models energy, water, and carbon fluxes between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. We are running the ICOS class 1 ecosystem site FR-Hes with a eddy covariance flux tower and a ton of ancillary measurements. We are co-developping the ecosystem model MuSICA as well as the global land surface models CABLE-POP and ISBA.

We develop innovative methods to process high-resolution flux data and use them to understand ecosystem processes. We are currently investigating the coordination between photosynthesis and stomatal conductance, plants access to water sources, and the link between soil water and stomata through water transport within trees (plant hydraulics). We use data from our eddy covariance site FR-Hes, from other ICOS ecosystem sites, and from FLUXNET.

We are testing ideas in the ecosystem model MuSICA and their large-scale consequences with the global land surface models CABLE-POP and ISBA. We are also looking into using explainable machine learning to improve process representation in the vegetation models.