Offer Description
- Work environment:
The HydroSciences Montpellier Joint Research Unit (UMR) is jointly overseen by three institutions: the University of Montpellier, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD).
HSM brings together expertise across a range of disciplines to study, quantify and predict the impacts of climate and human activities on water resources in Mediterranean and tropical regions.
HSM has a staff of approximately 180 people, including 120 permanent staff members (researchers, university lecturers and professors, technical and administrative staff, university hospital lecturers and practitioners, hospital practitioners at the University Hospital Centre (CHU), and lecturers and associate professors from IMT Mines Alès) and 60 non-permanent staff members. The latter include 45 PhD candidates, around ten of whom are enrolled in joint PhD programmes with the University of Montpellier.
More than half of all PhD candidates come from countries of the Global South and are enrolled at their home universities and/or undertaking joint PhD programmes with institutions in the Global North.
- Main mission:
The successful candidate will join the HYTAKE team within the HydroSciences Montpellier Joint Research Unit (HSM), as part of the research project led by this team: the PEPR ANR Onewater/K3 project (2023–2027), entitled “Impact of Global Change on Water Resources in Karst Socio-Hydrosystems: Vulnerability, Sensitivity and Management”.
The successful candidate will work specifically on Work Package 3 (WP3), “Water Quality and Impacts on Public Health”. They will be supervised by Christelle Batiot-Guilhe (Professor, HSM) and Vincent Bailly-Comte (hydrogeologist at the French Geological Survey (BRGM) and associate researcher with the G-EAU and HSM Joint Research Units). Both are involved in the K3 project, particularly WP3, which Christelle Guilhe-Batiot co-leads.
The purpose of this research contract is to consolidate and validate the innovative results and protocols developed within the K3 project, with a view to developing indicators and proxies for assessing the chemical and bacteriological quality of water, defining health risk thresholds, and thereby contributing to the implementation of an early warning system for water quality at karst water abstraction points.
To this end, new methods for interpreting multispectral optical signals from in situ probes, enabling high-frequency characterisation of organic matter transfers, will be combined with other physicochemical and hydrodynamic variables to characterise water transfers through the infiltration zone and the saturated zone of karst aquifers.
This project builds on two observatories accredited by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS): the MEDYCYSS Service Observatory (Lez Spring) and the Fontaine de Nîmes Service Observatory. Both are observation sites within the KARST Service and Observation Network (SNO), which is itself part of the OZCAR Research Infrastructure.
These developments will benefit from the proposed multidisciplinary approach, which aims to establish a protocol for implementing an early warning system to provide water resource managers with information on the quality of karst water resources
- Activities:
- State of knowledge
– Conduct a literature review on the subject.
– Compile and interpret existing data from the two SNO KARST experimental sites in order to harmonise monitoring activities and the associated methodological and analytical protocols.
2. Monitoring Strategy
– Conduct field monitoring and sampling, ranging from twice-monthly to several times daily during flood events.
– Maintain and calibrate high-frequency in situ optical probes.
3. Multidisciplinary Data Interpretation
– Conduct a multidisciplinary analysis of the data collected at each site by cross-referencing hydrodynamic, microbiological and hydrochemical data acquired at different frequencies.
– Identify statistical relationships between the various parameters.
– Identify the recharge processes specific to each karst system.
4. Validation of Water Quality Indicators and Proxies
Validate indicators and proxies of the chemical and microbiological quality of water resources, with a view to establishing a protocol for implementing an early warning system for karst water quality for the benefit of water resource managers. This will involve:
– Defining alert thresholds for each water quality indicator or proxy.
– Proposing alert levels to be tested.
Where to apply
E-mail: catherine.marchand@umontpellier.fr
Skills/Qualifications
The successful candidate must hold a PhD in hydrogeology or hydrogeochemistry and have strong expertise in karst aquifers. Experience in field water sampling and laboratory chemical analyses would be an asset, as would specific knowledge of karst hydrogeology.
The candidate should also be proficient in, or interested in developing, numerical code to automate data processing and perform statistical analyses. They should have the scientific expertise and critical perspective required to contribute to the development and validation of physicochemical and microbiological water quality indicators, as well as to the implementation of a preliminary demonstrator ahead of the deployment of an Early Warning System (EWS).
Working in collaboration with the project’s various partners, the candidate’s main responsibilities will be to:
i) Compare high-frequency in situ measurements with the results of laboratory chemical and microbiological analyses in order to identify bacterial contamination events in real time and validate indicators and proxies of water resource quality.
ii) Define alert thresholds associated with each water quality indicator or proxy.
iii) Propose alert levels to be tested.
Additional Information
Eligibility criteria
PhD in Hydrogeology/Hydrogeochemistry
Selection process
Send your CV by email to catherine.marchand@umontpellier.fr before 2026, 2nd of December.
