Welcome on the web site of ecological fonctioning of tropical and temperate soils research group (FEST)

FEST is one of the 2 team of the Soils in the Critical Zone department of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences (UMR iEES Paris)

The main objective of the FEST team is to better understand the interactions between biological actors and the abiotic properties of soils, and the impact of these interactions on the resulting ecosystem services.

In particular, we study the influence of soil engineers (especially earthworms, termites and microbial activity) and their “productions” (biostructures, biopores but also composts and vermicomposts as organic amendments used in the management of agricultural soils ) on the dynamics of abiotic properties of soils and the following essential ecosystem outputs: carbon and water storage and dynamics, plant growth and detachment (erosion) of soils.

For this, our studies are conducted along a pedoclimatic gradient from regions with high annual water deficit to regions with high water excess, relying on the different projects of the UMR iEES Paris (Brazil, Chile, France) and the AMMA-CATCH and M-TROPICS observatories in Niger, Tunisia, India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam.