Pedro COIMBRA

After specializing in ecological and territorial development economics and working with research in this field, my interests turned to biosphere-atmosphere interactions to better understand the relationship between climate and land use. This interest made me apply for my current internship on the impact of heat waves on the carbon and water cycles. Under increasing frequency and intensity of climate extremes, there is an urgent need to better understand their effects on ecosystems, particularly on carbon and water cycles. The 2019 European summer heat waves were particularly strong in France, both national and local temperature records were broken. In parallel, France is equipped with 18 sites connected to the European ICOS network (Integrated Carbon Observation System), which allows us to have real-time and high-frequency monitoring of CO2 and water vapor fluxes. Thus, the internship uses this powerful database to reveal the impacts of 2019 heat waves in France by analyzing the evolution of meteorological and carbon/water fluxes at the different sites (1) and the role of water stress and stomatal closure to the net ecosystem exchange (2). To this end, we use modelling for photosynthesis fluxes, comparisons between sites and ecosystems, and for selected sites a longer analysis placing 2019 relative to previous years. The specific conditions of heat waves, associated with low surface turbulence, can pose different limitations to the implemented methods. Finding these limitations is also insightful for future studies. I will conduct the data analyses, writing the report and answering these questions being closely supervised by Pauline Buysse and Benjamin Loubet, and with the help and support of EcoSys and French-ICOS associated researchers.