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L’affaissement et la dégradation des sols organiques, utilisés pour les cultures maraîchères du Québec, sont actuellement des sujets criants. Ces sols très fertiles sont utilisés pour la production d’environ 50 % des légumes au Québec. Cependant, une partie de cette ressource est perdue, à chaque année, à cause de l’érosion et de l’activité microbienne. Plusieurs mesures sont actuellement prises pour réduire ces pertes, telles que l’utilisation de brise-vent et la réduction des labours, dans le but d’augmenter la durée de vie de cette ressource. Toutefois, ces méthodes ne sont pas suffisantes et ne considèrent pas les facteurs biotiques derrière la dégradation des sols organiques. La respiration (oxydation) microbienne représente pourtant plus de 50 % de la perte totale de matière organique dans le sol. Comme les nématodes libres sont les prédateurs principaux du microbiote, leur abondance et leur diversité pourraient influencer les populations microbiennes, mais les conséquences de cette interaction sur la composition et la diversité des communautés sont peu connues. Cette étude fait ressortir le rôle indirect des nématodes dans la dégradation de la matière organique via la prédation des bactéries et des champignons dans le sol et la régulation de ces communautés. Nous avons manipulé les communautés de nématodes afin d’observer des variations de composition et de diversité dans la communauté bactérienne, ainsi que dans les processus de dégradation de la matière organique. Des variations significatives ont été observées pour la production possible d’enzymes extracellulaires provenant des bactéries, l’abondance des bactéries, la disponibilité de l’azote dans le sol et le rendement des feuilles de laitues. Ces résultats permettent de faire ressortir l’importance de la prédation des nématodes et la nécessité d’accorder à ce groupe une plus grande attention dans la mise en place de systèmes de production végétale. L’ajustement des pratiques culturales pourrait aider à maintenir des réseaux écologiques plus stables et augmenter la longévité des sols organiques., The subsidence and degradation of organic soils, used for vegetable crops in Quebec, is currently a critical issue. These very fertile soils are used for the production of about 50% of the vegetables in Quebec. However, part of this resource is lost every year due to erosion and microbial activity. Several measures are currently being taken to reduce these losses, such as the use of windbreaks and the reduction of plowing, to increase the life span of this resource. However, these methods are not sufficient and do not consider the biotic factors behind organic soil degradation. Microbial respiration (oxidation) accounts for more than 50% of the total loss of organic matter in the soil. Free-living nematodes are the main predators of the microbiota, their abundance and diversity could influence microbial populations, but the consequences of this interaction on community composition and diversity are poorly understood. This study highlights the indirect role of nematodes in the degradation of organic matter via predation of bacteria and fungi in the soil and the regulation of these communities. We manipulated nematode communities and observed variations in composition and diversity in the bacterial community, as well as in organic matter degradation processes. Specifically, significant variations were obtained for the possible production of extracellular enzymes from bacteria, bacterial abundance, soil nitrogen availability, and lettuce leaf yield. These results serve to highlight the importance of nematode predation and the need for greater attention to this group in the development of crop production systems. Adjusting cultural practices could help maintain more stable ecological networks and increase the longevity of organic soils.

International audience; Organic soils play a key role in global warming because they store large amount of soil carbon which might be degraded with changing soil temperatures or soil water contents. There is thus a strong need to monitor these soils and, in particular, their hydrological characteristics using, for instance, space-borne L-band brightness temperature observations. However, there are still open issues with respect to soil moisture retrieval techniques over organic soils. In view of this, organic soil blocks with their vegetation cover were collected from a heathland in the Skjern River catchment in western Denmark and then transported to a remote sensing field laboratory in Germany where their structure was reconstituted. The controlled conditions at this field laboratory made it possible to perform tower-based L-band radiometer measurements of the soils over a period of two months. Brightness temperature data were inverted using a radiative transfer (RT) model for estimating the time variations in the soil dielectric permittivity and the vegetation optical depth. In addition, the effective vegetation scattering albedo parameter of the RT model was retrieved based on a two-step inversion approach. The remote estimations of the dielectric permittivity were compared to in situ measurements. The results indicated that the radiometer-derived dielectric permittivities were significantly correlated with the in situ measurements, but their values were systematically lower compared to the in situ ones. This could be explained by the difference between the operating frequency of the L-band radiometer (1.4 GHz) and that of the in situ sensors (70 MHz). The effective vegetation scattering albedo parameter was found to be polarization dependent. While the scattering effect within the vegetation could be neglected at horizontal polarization, it was found to be important at vertical polarization. The vegetation optical depth estimated values over time oscillated between 0.10 and 0.19 with a mean value of 0.13. This study provides further insights into the characterization of the L-band brightness temperature signatures of organic soil surface layers and, in particular, into the parametrization of the RT model for these specific soils. Therefore, the results of this study are expected to improve the performance of space-borne remote sensing soil moisture products over areas dominated by organic soils.

From the passive L-band microwave radiometer onboard the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) space mission global surface soil moisture data is retrieved every 3 days. Thus far, the empirical L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) radiative transfer model applied in the SMOS soil moisture retrieval algorithm is exclusively calibrated over test sites in dry and temperate climate zones and the included dielectric mixing model relating soil moisture to permittivity accounts only for mineral soils. However, soil moisture monitoring over the higher northern latitudes is crucial since these regions are especially sensitive to climate change and a considerable feedback is expected due to carbon liberated from thawing ground of these extremely organic soils. Due to differing structural characteristics and thus varying bound water fractions, the permittivity of organic material is lower than the one of most mineral soils at a given water content. This assumption was verified by means of measurements in organic and mineral substrates from various sites in Denmark, Finland, Scotland and Siberia. For this purpose, conventional soil moisture sensors were used as well as weak perturbation and waveguide techniques in order to infer effective soil permittivity at the microwave L-band (1-2 GHz). Based on these data, a generic L-band soil moisture – permittivity relation for organic soils was derived and validated with dielectric mixing model runs as well as literature data. Furthermore, the derived function was tested in the L-MEB model. Results showed that modeled data agreed with measurements from a tower-based passive L-band microwave radiometer observing organic-rich soil over a 2 months period in a highly controlled set-up. The generic «organic» empirical model was then implemented in the SMOS Prototype Algorithm to retrieve soil moisture over a site in Northern Finland. The validation with in situ soil moisture observations calibrated for organic soils showed a distinct improvement in the agreement between the satellite and ground datasets when using the «organic» instead of the operational SMOS processor version. This analysis is to be continued in more detail and the validation effort needs to be expanded over as many regions with abundant soil organic matter content as possible. Appropriate in situ observations are currently available from various sites in Alaska, Canada, and the Netherlands. In this communication, first the derivation of the generic L-band «organic» soil moisture-permittivity model will be presented. Focus will then be on the comparison of «organic» SMOS soil moisture retrievals with corresponding operational SMOS products as well as in situ observations over all available sites.

International audience; Despite the high success of the NICA-Donnan (N-D) model to describe the interaction of protons and metal ions with natural organic matter, the large number of fit parameters is a major hindrance to its capacity to provide unique numerical solutions. This well-known difficulty is reflected in the unusually low value of the generic proton binding constant for carboxylic-type groups of fulvic acid (pKH1 = 2.34), and to some extent of humic acid (2.93), and by the considerable covariance of the other generic N-D parameters. In some studies, the number of parameters obtained by regression is reduced by estimating some values independently with other techniques. Alternatively, the applicability of the model can be improved by devising a rigorous simulation procedure, which constrains the model-fit to converge toward chemically and physically realistic values. A procedure based on three successive iterations is proposed, and the solution is shown to be stable and invariant with the initial set of parameter values. The new generic parameters, in particular pKH1(FA) = 3.54 and pKH1(HA) = 3.87, derived from the same data set as the previous generic parameters, are in better agreement with literature data.

La mission effectuée en Madagascar du 16 au 30 juin 1984 avait pour objectif d'étudier et de faire des propositions sur l'expérimentation de matériels agricoles à la SOMALAC. Le présent compte rendu fait le point sur les cultures du riz et du blé au Lac Alaotra afin de justifier les propositions faites dans un premier compte rendu provisoire

Avec une gamme de matériels de culture attelée encore très restreinte (charrue BAJAC, dents canadiennes, extirpateur et scarificateur, semoirs en ligne SIDEMA modifiés et semoirs monorangs EBRA) et en combinant les successions d'outils, la profondeur du travail et le nombre de dents efficaces, l'auteur a essayé de mettre au point des solutions techniques adaptées à chacun des types de sols rencontrés (sols rouges ferrallitiques ou sols noirs organiques, faciles ou difficiles à travailler) pour la mise en place de la culture du blé pendant la contre-saison