Know more

In France and worldwide, a majority of the population lives in cities and this proportion is constantly increasing. The city is a very mineral environment with low biodiversity. To make the city a functional and sustainable ecosystem, it is necessary to enrich its biocenosis by introducing spaces of nature and plants in particular. Plants will contribute, through their multifunctionality, to providing numerous ecosystem services, be they regulatory, supply or social. In return, plants in an urban environment are subject to particular microclimatic and edaphic conditions which impact their development. Our objective is to understand the impacts of the constraints imposed by the urban environment on the architectural development of plants and to identify the mechanisms that allow them better acclimation and longevity. For this we have two axes of study. A first axis consists in characterizing, at the scale of the whole plant, the architectural plasticity in response to the urban environment and in identifying the ecophysiological mechanisms involved in a better acclimation and maintenance of services. A second axis aims to study the mechanisms involved in the regulation of branching by the water regime because plants in cities are subject to fluctuating water regimes with significant episodes of water restriction and temperature rises, the frequency of which is expected to increase in the future.