A Ph-D POSITION (f/m/x) “Understanding Spontaneous Urban Nature and LOcal nO net land take Policies in European and local context”

Votre mission

Context

This Ph-D candidate position is part of the European project SUNLOOP “Spontaneous Urban Nature and LOcal nO net land take Policies”. It was selected as part of the European Biodiversa + call and is financed by the FNRS (supports the development of fundamental research within the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, in Belgium), the FNS (Swiss National Fund) and the ANR (National Research Agency in France). It includes a large consortium of 10 partners : Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse occidentale (CH), Université de Mons (BE), Natagora (BE), Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (FR), Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles (FR), Université de Fribourg (CH), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (FR), Institut Terre-Nature-Paysage (CH), Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (FR), Jardin Botanique de Meise (BE), and 4 sel-financed partners : Mairie de Ris-Orangis (FR), Grand Paris Sud Seine-Essonne-Sénart (FR), Igretec (BE), Agglomération de Fribourg (CH).

Description of the project SUNLOOP “Spontaneous Urban Nature and LOcal nO net land take Policies”

The SUNLOOP project addresses the challenges posed by biodiversity loss and climate change in urban environments, focusing on spaces of Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) as area providing multiple ecosystem services within the context of « No Net Land Take » policies. These policies, that are generalizing throughout Europe, aim to limit the artificialization of urban surfaces, making wastelands, derelict spaces, and any informal green spaces valuable for urban development. Despite their potential social and ecological benefits, these spaces are often neglected  due to their marginalization in urban planning. The project seeks to enhance understanding and awareness of SUN spaces that already exist in the urban fabric. The goal is to influence urban planning policies by integrating the socio-ecological value of spontaneous biodiversity.

The project’s objectives are:

• To define SUN spaces according to various representations, professional practices (including scientific ones), policies and territorial contexts, with a focus on the interrelations between spontaneous nature and urban biodiversity.
• To understand how the socio-ecological knowledge and representations of SUN spaces can be enhanced by a pluridisciplinary approach involving architects, planners, landscape architects, ecologists, biologists, pedologists, geographers, sociologists, geographic information specialists, artists.
• To uncover conditions under which representations and actions (or voluntary lack of actions) on SUN spaces effectively form Nature-based solutions in urban areas.
• To understand the discrepancy between the perception of the biodiversity of a space and the actual biodiversity supported by this space, to encourage a change of viewpoint on the part of local actors, to recognize multiple values, potentials, as well as downsides on the role of SUN spaces and the services they provide in urban planning.
• To strengthen the international networking of local actors and academics who are committed to maintaining and enhancing SUN spaces and to propose integrated methods in urban policies to do so.

The project emphasizes interdisciplinary research, combining environmental sciences, citizen science, urban planning and project-based and artistic approaches. The scientific team brings together expertise from Swiss, Belgian, and French academic institutions, as well as local stakeholders, sharing local perspectives on medium size cities that witnesses specific urban pressure in the common perspective of No Net Land Take policies. Five workpackages (WP) structure the project and are articulated with three local workshops that enable the interdisciplinary and experimental approach on the three application territories. These three major milestones gather transnational knowledge related firstly to the inventory and identification of SUN spaces, secondly to the observation and understanding of their socio-ecolocial co-benefits and thirdly to the experimentation of NBS using participatory and inclusive practices.

Your Mission

The mission of the Ph-D candidate is more specifically linked to the third task “QUALIFYING AND UNDERSTANDING Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) IN LOCAL CONTEXTS” coordinated by architects, urban planners, engineers, bioengineers, entomologists, ecologists colleagues from HEIA (Haute Ecole d’Ingénierie et d’Architecture de Fribourg) and Université de Mons (Faculté d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme et Faculté des Sciences). This WP develops a tool to evaluate ecological quality of SUN spaces based on a list of indicator plant and animal species and the assessment of soil quality. This tool, (hereinafter referred to as scientific tool, should make it possible to assign a score to SUN spaces based on a list of species and habitat characteristics in different climate conditions, to highlight its ecological quality. This tool would be adapted to the level of detail of the data available (for example, if data on species are not available, the calculation of indicators – i.e. harmonized Biotope Factor Area, specific richness or Functional Attribute Diversity – would be based on an exclusively « habitats » approach)

Description of the Ph-D candidate position

Ph-D research is focused on three objectives:

 QUALIFYING AND UNDERSTANDING Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) IN LOCAL CONTEXTS, with a focus on pollinators, aiming at:

• Development of sampling methods of biodiversity;
• Coordination with the other Belgian partners (Meise and Natagora);
• Coordination with the other European partners from WP3;
• Development of field sampling in the sites of Charleroi (12 sites).

Analyze the links between biodiversity, soil, climate and habitat characteristics, aiming at:

• conducting statistical analyses and functional characterization of the soil, vegetation and insect biodiversity;
• Comparing types of urban spaces following an intervention gradient (based on public data or citizen science) with maps on a territorial scale to identify the sites’ complementarity with other open spaces as refuges and/or corridors

Participate to the evaluation of the potential support, regulation (by climate pressure or usage of these spaces) and cultural co-benefits and their interrelations

The analysis will be presented in the form of a scientific report, with the aim of producing a scientific journal article at the end of the mission.

Other tasks linked to the overall project

The PhD student will actively participate in WP2 (understanding no net land take policies in European and local context) coordination meetings and and will contribute to the tasks of WP4 (developing ways of living with and taking care of SUN). WP4 aims to put the results of WP2 (public policy representations) and WP3 (ecological characterization) into perspective with an analysis of the urban and social role of SUN spaces with a view to assessing their potential for co-benefits for humans and non-humans. The aim of cross-reading the results is to draw scientific lessons on the ecological, urban and social characteristics of these spaces, as well as to understand the challenges they present in meeting ambitions for soil desartificialisation, climate adaptation, limiting biodiversity erosion and, more broadly, perpetuating an urban quality of life.The PhD student will contribute to the organization of workshops. Three workshops define collective milestones (one in each application territory) and will allow the articulation between WPs.

Description of the Team

This offer is for a doctoral position at the Université de Mons (UMONS). The Ph-D candidate will be supervised by Prof. D. Michez (Laboratory of Zoology) and Prof. K. Tougeron (Laboratory of Interaction Ecology and Global Change). Denis Michez is head of the Laboratory of Zoology (University of Mons) since October 2022. Denis Michez (Scopus: 211 articles, HI = 43) is developing interdisciplinary research about a group of organisms: the wild bees. His team gathers international specialists in domains of taxonomy, ecology, conservation and evolution. The expertise accumulated over the years has enabled the Zoology Laboratory to establish itself as a pioneer in research related to these wild pollinators, both at national and European levels. Denis Michez and his team therefore lead and take part to several major articles published in journals such as Annual Review of Entomology [1], Ecology letters [2], Apidologie [3], Global Change Biology [4], Nature Ecology & Evolution [5], Zootaxa [6] and Nature [7]. Denis Michez is also the author of a reference book on European wild bees [8]. The Laboratory of Zoology is leading/participating in several European-wide projects. As the subject of my PhD thesis is closely linked to these projects, the candidate will benefit from the European network of specialists generated by these initiatives, e.g.:

• DG Environment ORBIT (https://orbitproject.wordpress.com/), which is coordinated by the Laboratory of Zoology (Paolo Rosa, Denis Michez), and aims to develop a centralised taxonomic facility for European bees identification;
• Horizon 2020 Safeguard (https://www.safeguard.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/Default.aspx), which is carried out in collaboration with research teams from 14 countries, aims to re-assess and to monitor the status and trends of wild pollinators (including bees) in Europe;
• PULSE (IUCN), which is coordinated by the Laboratory of Zoology (Denis Michez), and aims to update the European Red List of bees [9].

[1] Danforth, B. N., et al. (2013). The impact of molecular data on our understanding of bee phylogeny and evolution. Annual review of Entomology, 58, 57-78. [2] Carvalheiro, L. G., et al. (2013). Species richness declines and biotic homogenisation have slowed down for NWEuropean pollinators and plants. Ecology letters, 16(7), 870-878. [3] Michez, D., et al. (2008). Phylogeny and host-plant evolution in Melittidae sl (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Apidologie, 39(1), 146-162. [4] Roger, N., et al. (2017). Impact of pollen resources drift on common bumblebees in NW Europe. Global Change Biology, 23(1), 68-76. [5] Duchenne, F., et al. (2020). Phenological shifts alter the seasonal structure of pollinator assemblages in Europe. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(1), 115-121. [6] Ghisbain, G., et al. (2023). The new annotated checklist of the wild bees of Europe (Hymenoptera: Anthophila). Zootaxa, 5327(1), 1-147. [7] Ghisbain, G., et al. (2024). Projected decline in European bumblebee populations in the twenty-first century. Nature, 628(8007), 337-341. [8] Michez, D., et al. (2019). Bees of Europe (NAP editions). [9] Nieto, A., et al. (2014). European Red List of bees. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union.

Kévin Tougeron is head of the EICG laboratory since 2023. The laboratory works on the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. We are particularly interested in the effect of global changes such as climate disruption and land use change on communities of organisms including insects and their associated organisms in trophic and non-trophic interaction networks.

These issues are addressed at different scales, from organismal physiology to population dynamics and the functioning of communities and natural ecosystems. Experiments are carried out in the laboratory and in outdoor environments, such as agriculture, through various research projects.

The aim of these research projects is to better protect biodiversity, particularly in agriculture and forestry, but also in urban areas, with a view to promoting the ecosystem services provided by biodiversity in a changing world. The EICG laboratory is currently conducting several large-scale research projects on these issues.

• WOODNET: Effects of wooded habitats (hedges, woods, …) on biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
• ConservES: Assessing the role of farm-to-landscape management (flower strips, hedges) for protecting useful biodiversity in agriculture, and passing solutions to the general public and farmers for improved engagement of the local population.
• TRANS-PEST: Developing new biological control solutions, based on biodiversity, for reducing the use of chemical pesticides in a climate change context.
• CDR HeavyMetals: Assessing the effect of trace metal exposure on the survival and ecophysiology of auxiliary insects (pollinators, predators, parasitoids) in agriculture landscapes.

At UMons, the candidate will collaborate with Kristel Mazy (architect and urban planner), coordinator of the Master in Urban Planning and Territorial Development organized by the Université de Mons and Université Libre de Bruxelles in Charleroi. Accompanied by the researchers of the third WP of the project “Understanding No net land take policies in European and local context”, coordinated by Marion Brun (ENSP Versailles), with the participation of the following researchers: Fabienne Favre Boivin (pedologist, HEIA Fribourg), Thomas Waroux (architect, UMONS), Marie Pairon (bioengineer, UMONS), Jennifer Di Prinzio (biologist, Natagora), Sandrine Godefroid (biologist, Royal botanical garden of Meise) Emeline Bailly (architect, CSTB), Louis Genevrois (urban planner, Igretec).