Antoine Casquin’s PhD advisory committee assembled on November 6th in Rennes. Antoine’s PhD is a member of the scientific consortium of the Lac au Duc case-study. His research evaluates the effect of the landscape spatial distribution on nitrogen and phosphorus dynamics in the lac au Duc catchment. The results of this research will help better localize PES in the catchment, where they will be the most efficient.
The investigations so far suggest that landscape spatial distribution can have an effect at two scales:
- Spatial organization of landscape elements (sources and sinks) within each of the landscape units present in a river basin.
- Spatial organization of landscape units within a river large basin, in relation to the river network.
An ongoing monitoring campaign during a period of 18 months, in collaboration with CNRS, will help better quantify these spatial effects. We will then evaluate the effect of PES implementation scenarios with a catchment model, comparing situations with optimized landscape management and situations where PES are implemented without consideration of spatial effects.
The scientific knowledge generated by this PhD research will provide useful information for the lac au Duc pilot study and other catchment areas with similar soil-climate contexts in the Channel region.
Antoine Casquin’s PhD research is supervised by Rémi Dupas et Patrick Durand (INRA Rennes). We would like to thank the French and international experts who accepted to be members of the advisory committee: Gérard Gruau (CNRS Rennes), Cécile Dagès (INRA Montpellier), Ben Abbott (Brigham Young University, USA).