Description
Project acronym:TYTRE
Project title: Typology of river thermal regimes from geospatial data
Research laboratory: LETG (Rennes, FR), EVS (Lyon, FR), Univ. Nottingham (Nottingham, UK)
Call for expression of interest description
The Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) programme is a highly prestigious renowned EU-funded scheme. It offers talented scientists a unique chance to set up 2-year research and training projects with the support of a supervising team. Besides providing an attractive grant, it represents a major opportunity to boost the career of promising researchers.
Research laboratories in Brittany are thus looking for excellent postdoctoral researchers with an international profile to write a persuasive proposal to apply for a Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2026 (deadline of the EU call set on 9th September 2026). The topic and research team presented below have been identified in this regard.
Main Research Field: Environment and Geosciences (ENV)
Research sub-field(s): Physical geography, remote sensing, river science
Keywords: Airborne remote sensing, aquatic habitats, river temperature, thermal infrared mapping, spatial analysis
Research project description
The pace at which freshwater ecosystems are deteriorating due to human activities is accelerating. Freshwater biodiversity has declined by 83% since 1970, with habitat degradation, pollution and warming playing key roles. In the following decades, river waters will continue to warm at unprecedented rates, causing further threats to biota. Water temperature is thus a key and critical component of river health. In the face of excessive water temperature, some organisms are capable of behaviourally thermoregulating by moving towards parts of the river with cooler water. These cool-water habitats are mostly controlled by the interaction between river and valley morphology, which drives groundwater-surface water dynamics. A precise and accurate mapping of this ‘thermal heterogeneity’ is thus key to understanding rivers’ resilience to climate change. As a result, the past ~30 years have seen the development of airborne thermal infrared (TIR) mapping approaches capable of monitoring temperature patterns in rivers. This technique has now reached a stage of maturity, with thousands of kilometres of rivers surveyed in France (for instance).
This abundance of data now represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Data acquisition campaigns were often conducted as part of different projects with specific objectives, and so underwent various levels of post-processing. In addition, there is currently a lack of coherent methods for analysing and interpreting TIR data, especially when acquired in various conditions (i.e., river size, length, thermal contrast, river discharge). Yet, the diversity in contexts in which data was collected (e.g., river type, hydroecoregions, hydrogeology, degree of alteration/restoration) offers a tremendous opportunity to gain precious insights into the role of groundwater – surface-water interactions in controlling the thermal regime of rivers at the riverscape scale and across regions and types.
The objectives of the postdoc is thus to leverage all this knowledge to (i) stabilise methods and tools used to process data, (ii) work on defining typology of rivers and (iii) gain insights into the resilience of river systems through the lens of temperature-sensitive organisms. Indeed, this project aims at looking at habitats that can benefit stenotherm species, at the interface between physical geography and aquatic ecology.
The Postdoctoral fellow will work on existing airborne TIR datasets (~80 rivers/settings) that have been collected over the past 15 years in different parts of the country, with a particular focus in the Rhône River basin and the pre-Alps region (Marteau et al., 2023). Additional datasets may be added during the postdoc depending on data acquisition campaigns from other projects. The postdoc will also benefit from interactions from ongoing research projects, such as the ‘ThermieFrance’ project from the ‘OneWater’ national research programme, which gathers geomorphologists, climatologists, hydrologists, hydrogeologists and fish biologists working on thermal refuges. Strong interactions with ecologists and fish specialists will be provided also through existing networks, e.g., Research and Development consortium with Scimabio Interface.
> Fullerton AH, Torgersen CE, Lawler JJ, Faux RN, Steel EA, Beechie TJ, Ebersole JL, Leibowitz SG. 2015. Rethinking the longitudinal stream temperature paradigm: Region-wide comparison of thermal infrared imagery reveals unexpected complexity of river temperatures. Hydrological Processes 29 (22): 4719–4737
> Marteau B, Piégay H, Moatar F. 2023. L’infrarouge thermique aéroporté, un outil de connaissance des rivières face au changement climatique : guide méthodologique et recommandations. Rapport final. Agence de l’eau RMC, ZABR, 93p.
> Sullivan CJ, Vokoun JC, Helton AM, Briggs MA, Kurylyk BL. 2021. An ecohydrological typology for thermal refuges in streams and rivers. Ecohydrology 14 (5): 1–15
Supervisor(s)
Baptiste Marteau is a fluvial geomorphologist working on understanding physical controls on thermal heterogeneity in rivers. He is developing tools, methods and metrics to characterise thermal habitats in riverine landscapes, with a particular emphasis on the use of remotely-sensed data. His expertise was recently called upon to author a guide on TIR imaging of river environments that is currently in use by the Rhône-Méditerranée-Corse Agence de l’Eau and partners. He is currently co-supervising two PhD students working on that topic: one studying the spatio-temporal patterns in thermal habitats on the Rhône River, and another recently appointed to better characterise groundwater-dependant thermal refuges in various fluvial contexts.
Hervé Piégay is a fluvial geographer with a broad international experience in the analysis of the relationships between human actions and the response of river forms and associated plant communities. His current interests focus on public policy, planning, maintenance, preservation and restoration of river systems, as well as changes in the perceptions and representations that stakeholders, local residents, scientists and managers have of rivers. He is applying remote sensing techniques (notably TIR imagery) to river diagnosis and monitoring. He is currently co-supervising two PhD students working on that topic too.
Steve Dugdale a physical geographer with interests in remote sensing and river processes. His research focusses on using novel geospatial and modelling approaches to understand the links between river habitats and ecosystems, river temperature dynamics, and climate change. He is an expert on river temperature dynamics (>30 papers in this area) and frequently collaborates with policy/governance organisations (eg. Marine Scotland [UK], USGS [USA]) and NGOs (Atlantic Salmon Federation, Gespe’gewa’gi Institute of Natural Understanding [both Canada]) on this topic. He currently supervises 5 PhD students, with 7 having completed to date.
Recent publications:
> Marteau B, Richard A, Dugdale SJ, Bouchard C, Caudron A, Piégay H. 2026. Spatial distribution of European grayling reflects longitudinal temperature patterns in a Swiss river. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 1 (35): e70027.
> Mejia FH, Ouellet V, Briggs MA, Carlson SM, Casas-Mulet R, Chapman M, Collins MJ, Dugdale SJ, Ebersole JL, Frechette DM, Fullerton AH, Gillis C-A, Johnson ZC, Kelleher CA, Kurylyk BL, Lave R, Letcher BH, Myrvold KM, Nadeau T-L, Neville H, Piégay H, et al. 2023. Closing the gap between science and management of cold-water refuges in rivers. Global Change Biology 29: 5482–5508.
> Marteau B, Michel K, Piégay H. 2022. Can gravel augmentation restore thermal functions in gravel-bed rivers? A need to assess success within a trajectory-based before-after control-impact framework. Hydrological Processes 36 (2): e14480.
> Dugdale SJ. 2016. A practitioner’s guide to thermal infrared remote sensing of rivers and streams: recent advances, precautions and considerations. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water 3 (2): 251–268.
Department/Research
The LETG-Rennes lab is a mixed research lab in environmental geography with a long-standing expertise in remote sensing of the environment (forests, rivers, wetlands, coastal areas), fluvial geomorphology and climatology. With 20 researchers and over 30 postdocs and PhD students, it is an international stronghold of pioneering research at the interface of remote sensing and physical geography. The lab benefits from its own drone-based remote sensing hub (D2Tä) together with the computing infrastructure and supporting staff to process complex remotely-sensed multispectral and 3D data.
LETG-Rennes is a branch of a wider LETG research lab with entities in Brest and Nantes. As a multi-site research unit, regular meetings and workshops are organised in either of the 3 cities.
Location
The position will be based in Rennes (Rennes 2 University, Villejean campus). Short-term research visits to Lyon and Nottingham will be organised throughout the project, depending on the needs/wills of the researcher and project advancements. The project will cover attendance to at least one conference per year.
Suggestion for interdisciplinary / intersectoral secondments and placements
- Research visits to the University of Nottingham (UK) may take the form of a longer secondments (up to 6 months, progress-dependent), to compare of France-wide results against data collected by Steve Dugdale and colleagues (UK, Canada)
- A possible additional support may be organised for a 6-months placement abroad at the end of the fellowship (e.g., with the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Canada; https://www.asf.ca/) to initiate a wider trans-Atlantic collaboration and test results on new datasets and/or with specific parameters to comply with north-American species requirements.
Skills Requirements
Applicants must have a PhD in physical geography, river science, geomatics/remote sensing applied to environmental studies, or hydrology with skills in spatial analysis/GIS/remote sensing. They must have a strong knowledge of spatial analysis and GIS, and an appetite for river science. Programming skills (e.g., python, R, MATLAB) are necessary, and knowledge of SfM photogrammetry will be appreciated. Additional training can be provided as part of the postdoctoral fellowship.
Applicants must also provide proofs of their ability to communicate with various partners, to lead their own research and to publish in international journals. Knowledge of French will be appreciated but is not compulsary.
Eligibility criteria for applicants
- Academic qualification: By the MSCA-PF call deadline 9th September 2026, applicants must be in possession of a doctoral degree, defined as a successfully defended doctoral thesis, even if the doctoral degree has yet to be awarded
- Research experience: Applicants must have a maximum of 8 years full-time equivalent experience in research, measured from the date applicants were in possession of a doctoral degree Years of experience outside research and career breaks (e.g., due to parental leave), will not be taken into account
- Nationality & Mobility rules: Applicants can be of any nationality but must not have resided more than 12 months in France in the 36 months immediately prior to the MSCA-PF call deadline 9th September 2026
Application process
We encourage all motivated and eligible postdoctoral researchers to send their expressions of interest through the EU Survey application form (link here)[1], before 31st May 2026 Your application shall include:
- a CV detailing: (i) for each position you had, the exact dates and location (country) and (ii) a list of accepted publications;
- a cover letter including a research outline (up to 2 pages) identifying the research synergies with the project supervisor(s) and proposed research topics described above
Estimated timetable
Deadline for sending an expression of interest: 31st May 2026
Selection of the applicant: June 2026 at the latest
Writing the MSCA-PF proposal with the support of the above-mentioned supervisor(s): June – September 2026
MSCA-PF 2026 call deadline: 9th September 2026
Publication of the MSCA-PF evaluation results : February 2027
Start of the MSCA-PF project (if funded): May 2027 (at the earliest)
[1]https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2026-Formulaire-Candidature-Demarc…
