IFREMER – French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea
Nantes, France
General areas of responsibility (principal missions)
Develop methods for integrating knowledge applied to ecosystem assessment;
Develop methods for assessing ecosystems based on indicators;
Perform integrated ecosystem assessments over marine eco-regions;
Contribute to developing management scenarios addressing multiple objectives.
Principal activities
Make use of statistical methods to integrate knowledge and data (measurements, indicators, model results) of various types informing on all ecosystem compartments, their state and pressures;
Provide spatial representations of ecosystem characteristics (production, biodiversity, trophic hotspots, habitats, temporal variability) and define spatial limits of ecosystems;
Contribute to the development of indicator-based methods for assessing ecosystem health, including: trend detection, reference points, cumulative effects, aggregation of indicators, risk;
Perform ecosystem assessments and contribute to assessing Good Environmental Status for MSFD considering environment, trophic relationships, habitats, human uses and impacts, and pollution;
Contribute to developing governance scenarios with multiple and coherent objectives to ensure ecosystem conservation and resource sustainable exploitation.
Collaborative work environment
Internal collaborative relationship: work with all researchers at EMH in developing an integrated statistical framework for ecosystem assessment; collaborate with other fisheries units for assessing various eco-regions and characterizing human impacts and activities; collaborate with non-fisheries units of departments RBE and ODE on environment, contaminants, pollution
External collaborative relationship: participate to the ICES working group on the assessment of ecosystems in western european waters; collaborate with social scientists from university of Nantes within the network IUML; participate to international research projects; get involved in advisory works for MSFD at national and European levels.
Profile and expertise sought
Initial training
PhD and/or Postdoc in Quantitative ecology or Applied statistics.
Personal qualities
Rigour and precision;
Capacity to work collaboratively;
Interest for inter-disciplinary works;
Willingness to learn french.
Specific knowledge
Statistical methods: bayesian methods including belief networks and dynamic linear models ; time series analysis ; spatial statistics, multivariate data analyses;
Methods for organizing and integrating knowledge such like ODDEM;
Marine Ecology;
Programming langages (R, MatLab);
Data bases (SQL, postgresp).