Research topics
• Understand and determine the environmental constraints (climate, soil, disturbances, anthropisation) on the distribution of tropical ecosystems and more particularly savannas
• Develop the use of biological indicators such as phytoliths by combining them with sedimentary DNA, pollen, isotope (δ¹³C) and lake sedimentary charcoal data to quantify long-term ecological dynamics
• Understand the role of Man in current and past tropical ecosystems (fires, agriculture, plant diffusion and domestication,…) using fossil data contained in natural archives