PREPSOIL is looking for Post-Doc in Remote Sensing for Soil Monitoring!

23, February, 2023

PREPSOIL is looking for a Post-Doc in Remote Sensing for Soil Monitoring. The job vacancy workplace is the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (INRAE), a public research establishment. It is a community of 12,000 people with more than 200 research units and 42 experimental units located throughout France.

The candidate will be involved in Earth Observation techniques for Soil Health monitoring. This task aims to assess how Satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) can provide the basic information needed to estimate indicators related to the vegetation cover, landscape heterogeneity and area of forest and other wooded lands, as well as soil organic carbon, which are 4 (out of 8) soil health indicators retained for the Mission Board “A soil deal for Europe”.

The candidate will conduct the following tasks under the supervision of Pierre Renault (Deputy Scientific Director for Environment at INRAE) and Marie Weiss (CAPTE team, research engineer in close range and remote sensing):

Conduct a survey and analysis of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) variables and associated algorithms relevant to assess soil health indicators
Conduct a survey and analysis of the existing and emerging algorithms out of the CLMS that could also be relevant to the European Soil Mission. A specific attention will be paid to identify existing and emerging algorithms innovative/original compared to CLMS algorithms
Identify and chose areas with the consortium partners, and then, evaluate/assess a selection of variables and associated algorithms to estimate soil health indicators (comparisons of indicator maps, comparison with other indicator estimations)
Interact actively with the PRESOIL partners, research infrastructure managers in France (e.g. OZCAR, and RZA, THEIA, ...) and Europe (candidate research infrastructures for eLTER) as well as European projects dedicated to soil health monitoring (e.g. EUSO)
Manage the writing of a scientific paper to present the outputs of the study as the main deliverable for the project ( "Technical feasibility in using CLMS satellite-based EO to estimate soil health indicators")
Participate to an international symposium and to the organisation of the PREPSOIL meeting in France.

Training and skills

PhD

Good knowledge in remote sensing and Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS);
Basic knowledge on soil and environmental sciences;
Good knowledge in scientific programming (python and/or matlab) & Remote sensing processing;
Dynamic and collaborative team player, autonomous, proactive and rigorous Spoken/written fluent English

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
teleworking, up to 144 days per year
parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
skills development systems: training, career advise;
social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
sports and cultural activities;
collective catering.