My research addresses the mitigating role of local processes in the ecosystem responses to a changing environment.

The shift of species distributions already recorded [1,2,3] marks the triggering of changes predicted larger and more profound for the near future [4]. Facing the societal questioning raised by such predictions, the recent technological advances make the numerical approach a first-order tool to provide relevant and intelligible answers. Nonetheless, the modelling effort engaged in that perspective is facing the ecosystem characteristics and complexity [5]

In the concept of “integrative community”, Lortie et al. [6] highlighted the diverse degrees of inter-dependency among the processes structuring the communities and the ecosystems. The complex web of direct and indirect interactions within biotic communities, among them and with the abiotic environment, keeps a dark side which is, by definition, difficult to model. A second challenge was already introduced in the seminal paper of Watt [7] in which plants communities are described as “working mechanisms in a spatiotemporal mosaic”. The processes structuring the communities and the ecosystems vary in intensity and importance across space and time limiting our abilities to identify the links between pattern and processes.

Based on this acknowledgment, the scientific community is calling for more interdisciplinarity and synergy among the fields of environmental sciences for our insights in the understanding of processes to feed the mechanistic dimension of the modelling effort. As a re-discovery of the origins, the integrative approach is increasingly identified as a key development of ecology.

My early career transliterates such ambition to embrace the integrative aspect of ecology. From a focus on plant communities, for their pivotal role in the matter and energy fluxes in the ecosystem, I extended my investigations to the multi-trophic and multi-compartment dimensions of the local processes. Moreover, I enlarged the temporal window of observation from the monthly monitoring of the processes to the multi-decadal dynamics of the communities. Through collaborations, also favoured by field experiment as an invitation to pluri-disciplinary, I aim to enlarge my own understanding of the ecosystem functioning and at integrating other approaches and methods in order to favour the dialog and synergy toward an actual pluri-disciplinary integration.

I developed my research in diverse systems (Fig.2) from sub-Antarctic isolated islands to the high Arctic tundra. In severe environments, mostly Alpine and Arctic systems, the constraints can accentuate structuring forces and reveal mechanisms. The prevalence of abiotic limiting factors can stress the environment-biotic community relationships and outline the mechanisms of interactions while the spatiotemporal heterogeneity can provide a range of conditions favourable to the expression of contrasted interactions. On the other hand, under more temperate conditions, from the Mediterranean forests to sub-Arctic tundra heath, the history of human pressure can be an invitation for a better consideration of the dynamic and multi-driver aspects of the ecosystem functioning.

The Arcana of Plant Communities