Hi! My name is Cécile and I work as a PhD for the RESHAPE project. I have a background in earth sciences and I am greatly interested in how landscapes and ecosystems and land use influence each other, and how this influences soil and water dynamics. For RESHAPE I’ll be looking into the water-carbon-nutrient dynamics in Dutch sandy soils. I will focus my research on how we can integrate nature-inspired principles to make these landscapes more resilient in the future. An issue with sandy soils is that they are sensitive to drought. Under drought conditions the regular soil processes (such as nitrogen mineralization, degradation of organic matter, etc.) behave differently, altering the chemistry of the water that flows through the soil and collects in the river. With more frequent and more severe droughts expected due to climate change, it is all the more important to understand how these nutrient cycles are affected by climate change, and what we can do to mitigate the issue.
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