Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
INRAE is France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (12,000 people, >200 research units, and 42 experimental units) and is among the world leaders in agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, and ecology and environment. INRAE does science dedicated to life, humans, and the earth, recognising that humankind and the planet are facing global changes. Its research addresses: limiting the effects of and adapting to climate change; increasing food security and nutrition security; transitioning to new agricultural systems; preserving natural resources; restoring biodiversity; and anticipating and managing risks. It also considers more regional issues like living conditions, farmers' salaries, the economic competitiveness of companies, land use, and universal access to healthy and varied diets.
Role within SOB4ES
INRAE will play an active role in WP2, contributing to the comprehensive understanding of spatial and temporal dynamics concerning Soil Organisms (SOB), soil community composition, soil network structure, and the interconnections between belowground and aboveground biodiversity. This contribution will involve the analysis of responses to various Land Use (LU) types and their intensities. Leveraging our expertise, we will aid in identifying drivers and pressures linked to changing land intensification while furnishing valuable SOB insights for the functional analyses conducted in WP3. Within WP3, we will employ a recently developed machine learning pipeline to construct diverse interaction networks encompassing predation (trophic), competition, amensalism, commensalism, and more. These networks will facilitate the assessment of Ecosystem Services (ES) interactions, encompassing synergies, trade-offs, and net losses. Our focus will be on evaluating their impact on SOB dynamics. Additionally, INRAE leads Task 3.3, which entails assessing the potential of ecosystems to generate ES based on SOB under relevant Land Use scenarios and intensities defined by the EU.
