Thesis as a part of the Agri4SoilWater project: modeling the effects of agricultural practices on soil water dynamics (M/F)

The National Center for Meteorological Research (CNRM) is a joint research unit (UMR 3589) set up by CNRS and Météo-France. The CNRM is recognized as one of the world's leading meteorological research centers, coordinating and carrying out most of the research activities carried out within Météo France. To carry out its missions and carry out the experiments essential to the acquisition of new knowledge, the CNRM teams rely on high-tech resources: supercomputers and numerical models of the Earth system, observation satellites, instrumented aircraft, fixed or mobile measuring stations, instrumented sites, etc., and members of CNRM cooperate closely with other French and international laboratories, universities and research structures. The PhD student will be based at CNRM in Toulouse, in the mesoscale processes group (GMME), within the SURFACE team, which specializes in modeling continental surface processes and surface-land-hydrology interactions.

Create a digital laboratory to study the impact of agricultural practices on water and energy budgets, both in the past and in the future, for better water management in the face of climate change. To achieve this objective, the student will implement a pragmatic approach to modeling agricultural practices in ISBA-SURFEX (i.e. impact on vertical heat and mass transfer, infiltration and surface energy balance). The idea is to implement/evaluate the changes on a local scale, then implement them in an "offline" spatially distributed simulation over the Occitania region to study and quantify the impact on the hydrological cycle, with a possible longer-term objective of studying strategies for improving water conservation.