Know more

About cookies

What is a "cookie"?

A "cookie" is a piece of information, usually small and identified by a name, which may be sent to your browser by a website you are visiting. Your web browser will store it for a period of time, and send it back to the web server each time you log on again.

Different types of cookies are placed on the sites:

  • Cookies strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the site
  • Cookies deposited by third party sites to improve the interactivity of the site, to collect statistics

Learn more about cookies and how they work

The different types of cookies used on this site

Cookies strictly necessary for the site to function

These cookies allow the main services of the site to function optimally. You can technically block them using your browser settings but your experience on the site may be degraded.

Furthermore, you have the possibility of opposing the use of audience measurement tracers strictly necessary for the functioning and current administration of the website in the cookie management window accessible via the link located in the footer of the site.

Technical cookies

Name of the cookie

Purpose

Shelf life

CAS and PHP session cookies

Login credentials, session security

Session

Tarteaucitron

Saving your cookie consent choices

12 months

Audience measurement cookies (AT Internet)

Name of the cookie

Purpose

Shelf life

atid

Trace the visitor's route in order to establish visit statistics.

13 months

atuserid

Store the anonymous ID of the visitor who starts the first time he visits the site

13 months

atidvisitor

Identify the numbers (unique identifiers of a site) seen by the visitor and store the visitor's identifiers.

13 months

About the AT Internet audience measurement tool :

AT Internet's audience measurement tool Analytics is deployed on this site in order to obtain information on visitors' navigation and to improve its use.

The French data protection authority (CNIL) has granted an exemption to AT Internet's Web Analytics cookie. This tool is thus exempt from the collection of the Internet user's consent with regard to the deposit of analytics cookies. However, you can refuse the deposit of these cookies via the cookie management panel.

Good to know:

  • The data collected are not cross-checked with other processing operations
  • The deposited cookie is only used to produce anonymous statistics
  • The cookie does not allow the user's navigation on other sites to be tracked.

Third party cookies to improve the interactivity of the site

This site relies on certain services provided by third parties which allow :

  • to offer interactive content;
  • improve usability and facilitate the sharing of content on social networks;
  • view videos and animated presentations directly on our website;
  • protect form entries from robots;
  • monitor the performance of the site.

These third parties will collect and use your browsing data for their own purposes.

How to accept or reject cookies

When you start browsing an eZpublish site, the appearance of the "cookies" banner allows you to accept or refuse all the cookies we use. This banner will be displayed as long as you have not made a choice, even if you are browsing on another page of the site.

You can change your choices at any time by clicking on the "Cookie Management" link.

You can manage these cookies in your browser. Here are the procedures to follow: Firefox; Chrome; Explorer; Safari; Opera

For more information about the cookies we use, you can contact INRAE's Data Protection Officer by email at cil-dpo@inrae.fr or by post at :

INRAE

24, chemin de Borde Rouge -Auzeville - CS52627 31326 Castanet Tolosan cedex - France

Last update: May 2021

Menu Logo Principal agroParistech cnrs ird ANR

Soilµ3D

Context and objectives

Context

At the turn of the millennium, 40-50% of the land surface on earth was devoted to agricultural production (IPCC, 2001). This land area currently feeds more than 6 billion people, but by mid-century, it will be expected to feed about 9 billion people, Processes that are advocated to make this possible involve expanding agricultural land to currently uncultivated areas, and increasing food production on land currently under cultivation. Food security can be achieved only if land use is sustainable and soil functions are maintained by careful soil management. At the same time, there is also significant concern related to the release by agriculture fields to the atmosphere of significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) like CO2 and N2O (Cole et al., 1997; IPCC, 2001; Paustian et al., 2004). CO2 is released largely from microbial mineralization of soil organic matter (Smith, 2004b; Janzen, 2004) and N2O is generated by the microbial transformation of nitrogen in soils, especially under wet conditions (Oenema et al., 2005; Smith and Conen, 2004). Agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases could increase to 7.9-8.5 Pg CO2 eq/year by 2050 (Global Research Alliance). Reduction of GHG emissions by improving the efficiency of agricultural systems through robust ecologically-based management practices represents the most important challenge facing agriculture today, but GHG fluxes are highly heterogeneous. Simulation models are needed to decipher the relative effects of soil properties, climate, and agricultural management practices for a wide range of circumstances, since soil is the most complex biological system on the planet. This, however, requires better integration of the currently fragmented knowledge in soil science by bridging the sub-disciplines and time-space scales in order to enable modelling and up-scaling for accurate predictions. Current models should be improved by using recent technological advances made to observe and understand the spatial environment of microorganisms responsible of GHG at the microscopic scales (Baveye and Laba, 2015). We believe that the results of our project will improve predictions of soil models and contribute in the future to help first soil scientists and then land managers to develop novel soil management practices able to maintain soil functions with limited environmental impacts.

Objectives

The goal of this new project is now to go further by using the 3D models resulting from Mepsom to upscale heterogeneities identified at the scale of microhabitats to the soil profile scale. In Soilµ-3D project, MEPSOM’s 3D models will pass the baton to simpler models able to run at the field scale for a better prediction of organic matter decomposition, nitrous oxide emission and organic pollutants impacted by climate and environmental changes. The general question we intend to answer in the proposed research is whether information on the spatial heterogeneity of soils at the microscale can be used to predict the processes observed at the macroscale in soils (Friedlingstein et al., 2006, Addiscott. 2010, Baveye et al., 2010). To answer this question we need to find the key descriptors of soil structure that can explain the nature and extent of CO2 and N2O emissions, and the specific spatial distributions of organic compounds within the soil structure, and their descriptors that explain their accessibility and availability to microorganisms.

 

The aims of the project are to:

  • Analyze experimentally the dependency of CO2 and NO2 emissions on the microscale heterogeneity of soils in various conditions (we propose to extend our approach to N2O emission compare to MEPSOM project which dealt only on carbon mineralization)
    • Develop new descriptors of the pore scale 3D soil heterogeneitythat explain the fluxes measured at the core scale
    • Improve the performance of 3D pore scale models to simulate processes from pores to cores with a reduction of the computational time
    • Develop new simple models describing the soil micro-heterogeneity and integrating these micro-features into field-scale models
  • Use our 3D models to connect the µ-scale heterogeneity and the measured macroscale fluxes