Bandeau MELICERTES

Resilience of forest agroecosystems on the pacific slope of ecuador: impact of climate change and ENSO extreme events, coupled remote sensing and modeling approach

PhD research project as part of the MELICERTES project, supervised by INRAE.

  • Title: "Resilience of forest agroecosystems on the pacific slope of ecuador: impact of climate change and ENSO extreme events, coupled remote sensing and modeling approach" ; INRAE.

Project summary:

Using a remote sensing approach, this PhD aims to reconstruct the landscape dynamics of the Pacific watershed of Ecuador over the last three decades (since the early 1990s) to identify and map its various ecosystems (including forest agroecosystems). The goal is to understand their evolution over time based on climate factors (climate change, extreme ENSO events, floods, droughts) and human influence (agriculture, aquaculture, drinking water, dams, irrigation, land-use conflicts) over the same period. To do this, we will exploit various model classes, including those developed within the team, to reconstruct this dynamic from the data (Melicertes project, WP3). The aim is to quantify the impact of disruptive events not only on the variables of interest (e.g., agroecosystem production, societal impacts such as floods, etc.), but also on the dynamics of the ecosystems themselves (e.g., resilience before returning to normal behavior, Melicertes WP4). This knowledge of the past-present (last 30 years) will allow us to make projections into the future based on various climate change and socio-economic practices scenarios, providing relevant management elements to decision-makers for the coming decades.

See also