English
Marie-Elise is an agronomist and an assistant professor at the Department of Soils and Agri-Food Engineering at Laval University in Québec, Canada. Her areas of expertise include agropedology and biogeochemical cycles of soil organic matter. She is interested in the effect of agricultural management practices on crop yields, soil fertility and carbon storage in soil. In addition to working on the development and applicability of innovative and sustainable cropping practices, Marie-Élise sees pedometry and modeling as necessary tools to inform science-based decision making from farm to governmental scale. She believes improving these tools will globally help optimizing the agricultural, economic and environmental services provided by agricultural soils. Through her research, her collaborations with various agri-food stakeholders and her involvement in many transfer and extension activities, Marie-Élise wishes to contribute to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of agri-food systems through a systemic, transdisciplinary and collaborative approach.
Français
Marie-Elise est agronome et professeure adjointe au Département de génie des sols et de l'agroalimentaire de l'Université Laval à Québec, Canada. Ses domaines d'expertise comprennent l'agropédologie et les cycles biogéochimiques de la matière organique du sol. Elle s'intéresse à l'effet des pratiques de gestion agricole sur le rendement des cultures, la fertilité du sol et le stockage du carbone dans le sol dans un contexte de lutte et d'adaptation aux changements climatiques. En plus de travailler sur le développement et l'applicabilité de pratiques culturales innovantes et durables, Marie-Élise considère la pédométrie et la modélisation comme des outils essentiels pour éclairer les prises de décision basées sur la science, tant à l'échelle de la ferme qu'à l'échelle gouvernementale. Elle pense que l'amélioration de ces outils sera nécessaire pour aider à optimiser les services agricoles, économiques et environnementaux fournis par les sols agricoles. Par ses recherches, ses collaborations avec divers acteurs de l'agroalimentaire et son implication dans de nombreuses activités de transfert et de vulgarisation, Marie-Élise souhaite contribuer à assurer la durabilité et la résilience des systèmes agroalimentaires par une approche systémique, transdisciplinaire et collaborative.
Current research project
Worldwide, 20 % of arable soils showed persistent declining trends in productivity over the last decades. The adoption of regenerative management practices could reverse these trends by returning a substantial amount of atmospheric CO2 to soil in the form of soil organic matter. Not only could this strategy contribute to climate change mitigation, but it could also increase soil fertility and resilience. Increasing SOM content in agricultural soils could therefore improve the sustainability and resilience of our food production systems, thereby contributing to ensuring food security for future generations. However, due to the intrinsic complexity of agroecosystems, management practices that efficiently store carbon in agricultural soils are often site specific. Implementing soil-based mitigation strategies will therefore require the capacity to accurately estimate carbon stock changes at the farm-scale level following changes in management practices. The development of mechanistic models that capture process-based understanding of soil organic matter dynamics as a function of location, environmental conditions and management practices have therefore been identified as one of the most promising approaches to the development of soil-based climate mitigation strategies. The aim of this project is to parametrize, the MEMS 2.0 ecosystem model for agricultural soils under a wide range of crop management, soil and climate conditions. This will be made possible thanks to a Canadian network of long-term agricultural field trials. Ultimately, this tool could be used to inform agricultural management policies that could help mitigate climate change and help foster the regeneration of our soils to ensure food security for future generations.
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