1_ Research staff

Research activity at LIF laboratory is organized in three broad topics including : 1) survey sampling and inference in forest inventory (TARGET 1), 2) remote sensing for forests and mutisource inventory (TARGET 2), and 3) new indicators for forests in a non-stationary environment (TARGET 3).


TARGET 1 - Minna Pulkkinen, Olivier Bouriaud

TARGET 2 - Cédric Vega, Nikola Besic, Jean-Pierre Renaud

TARGET 3 - Jean-Daniel Bontemps, Lionel Hertzog, Laura Bouriaud


Jean-Daniel Bontemps (research director)

Senior researcher & head of LIF, PhD in Forest Science (ENGREF, Paris), habilitation in Agronomy (Univ. Lorraine, Nancy). He is a specialist of forest dynamics and its changes under global change. After a PhD on long-term changes in forest growth, he has formerly worked as an associate-professor in Forest Science at AgroParisTech where he developed the international curriculum Forests and their ENvironment. He was involved in the ANR-funded « Oracle » project on agriculture and forest adaptation to climate change. His activities in the laboratory relate to 1) monitoring of CC-impacts onto forests, 2) forest transition and large-scale non-stationary forest dynamics.

Homepage, jean-daniel.bontemps@ign.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Minna Pulkkinen (researcher)

PhD in Forest Science (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu), MSc in Forest Science, MSc in Statistics, Minna Pulkkinen is a researcher in survey sampling, statistical inference and forest monitoring at lab. In addition to forest mensuration and forest inventory, she has gained research experience in statistical modelling in the fields of forest ecology, wood science and silviculture, in various institutions including the Finnish Forest Research Institute, University of Helsinki, INRAE (France) and WSL (Switzerland). Her most recent research activities at WSL were about post-stratification models and small-area estimation for the Swiss NFI.

minna.pulkkinen@ign.fr, LinkedIn


Cédric Vega (research director)

PhD in Environmental Sciences (UQAM, Montreal), habilitation in remote sensing (Univ. Paul Sabatier Toulouse), Cédric Vega is a permament research director at lab. He is a specialist of remote sensing in forestry, including A-Lidar and photogrammetry. After a PhD dedicated to forest height and productivity mapping, he performed a post-doc on terrain modelling and tree crown extraction and modelling (Maison de la Télédétection, ANR FORESEE). He has led the Laboratory of Applied Informatics and Geomatics at the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP, India) where he worked on biomass assessment in tropical forests. His activities in the lab relate to 1) multisource forest inventory (MS-NFI), 2) developments on T-Lidar for assessing forest growing stock.

cedric.vega@ign.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Nikola Besic (researcher)

PhD in Signal Processing and Telecommunications (Université Grenoble-Alpes), Nikola Besic is researcher at lab in remote sensing and multisource inventory, specialized in signal processing of radar, lidar and optic sensors and contributes to the development of multisource inventory. Nikola has been a post-doctoral fellow at LTE Laboratory of EPFL (Switzerland) and MeteoSwiss, and at the Centre for radar meteorology at Météo-France. his researches have been mostly related to the satellite and ground-based radar remote sensing of the atmosphere, with a particular emphasis on the concept of polarimetry. His research skills include statistical signal and image processing as well as machine learning/data mining techniques.

nikola.besic@ign.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Lionel Hertzog (researcher)

PhD in Ecology (TU München, Germany), Lionel Hertzog in a permanent researcher at lab in the field of forest monitoring for tracking and deciphering the impacts of ongoing CC on forests and their causes. He has had post-doctoral experiences at Ghent University (Belgium) on biodiversity upscaling from local to landscape levels, and at the Thünen Institute of biodiversity (Germany) on the monitoring of biodiversity in farmland programs. He has worked on research fields including the relationships between ecosystem biodiversity and functioning, ecosystem response to climatic change, with applications on forests and grasslands.

HomePage, lionel.hertzog@ign.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Jean-pierre Renaud (associate-researcher, ONF, R&D Department, Nancy)

PhD in Biology (Laval University, Canada), Jean-Pierre Renaud is currently forest biometrician at ONF R&D, and is conducting research in multisource forest inventory and remote sensing. His skills encompass statistical modelling, scientific programming, forest inventory and monitoring, and simulation. In his former professional activities, he has occupied positions in forest monitoring (Biosoil program of ICP level-1 monitoring network), forest inventory (quality assurance in the French NFI program), remote sensing applied to forests (ANR FORESEE). Jean-Pierre Renaud is also involved in training activities of statistical engineering for ONF and AgroParisTech.

jean-pierre.renaud-2@onf.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Olivier Bouriaud (associate-researcher, Univ. Stefan Cel mare, Romania)

PhD in Forest Science (ENGREF, Paris), habilitation in Ecology (Univ. Orsay). Olivier Bouriaud has two specialities, in biomass acquisition and allocation in forest ecosystems, and in forest sampling and inventory. Olivier Bouriaud was a visiting researcher in the Canadian Forest Service (Northern Forestry Centre) from 2004 to 2007, before joining the Romanian ICAS institute, where he was heard of the Methods and Model Office in charge of designing the first national forest inventory of Romania (2007-2018). He has participated in several EU-funded research projects, including Fundiv (role of biodiversity on forest functioning and biomass acquisition) and Diabolo (forest inventory) projects. His activities in the lab relate to 1) research on the sampling design, statistical estimators and optimisation of the French National forest inventory, and 2) forest biomass acquisition and allocation patterns and their response to global changes.

olivier.bouriaud@ign.fr, ResearchGate, Scholar


Laura Bouriaud (associate-researcher, Univ. Stefan Cel Mare, Romania)

Professor at University Stefan Cel Mare of Suceava (Romania) in Forest and environmental law and policy, PhD in Forest Policies (ENGREF, France), Laura Bouriaud is associate-researcher at LIF. Her field of expertise encompasses forest sector governance, private forestry, illegal logging and corruption in Eastern Europe and in the analysis of the forest sector adaption to climate change. Laura Bouriaud is starting a collaboration at lab on returning forests on abandoned farmlands, their ecological properties and options for their governance, using national forest inventories as support information.

HomePage, bouriaud@usv.ro, ResearchGate, Scholar