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Scientist at INRAE / UMR SAS Phone: (+33) 2 23 48 54 38 Email: ophelie.fovet@inrae.fr Address: INRAE Centre Bretagne-Normandie, UMR SAS, 65 rue de St-Brieuc, CS 84215, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France Fields of expertise: hydrology and solute transport, surface water quality Keywords: anthropized catchments, headwaters, nutrient, carbon, suspended solids, water and solute transit times, biogeochemistry

Activities

Research

Current research topic

My research topics are hydrology and biogeochemistry. I am interested in understanding the processes that determine the water quality of streams and rivers, especially in the context of agricultural environments. I use diverse monitoring and modelling approaches to characterize the transfer, transit times and reaction processes of water and some major chemical elements, mainly nutrients (N, P) and C.

I focus on small headwater catchments (10 ha - 100 km²) to medium-scale catchments (ca. 1000 km²).

I am involved in several observation platforms for research. In particular, I am scientific coordinator of a research observatory on agricultural catchments: the AgrHyS Observatory.

Current projects

• Ecological Restoration of the Sélune River: Dynamics of water, sediments and dissolved chemical elements in the Sélune River before, during and after dam removal (2014-2021)
• Biogeochemical processes of intermittents and ephemeral rivers and streams in temperate and oceanic context (2022-2025). Supervision of the Ph.D. thesis conducted by Andres Casanova and programme OBTAINER funded by Region Bretagne. 
• eLTER PLUS: Advanced community project for long-term ecosystem research in Europe (2020-2025)
• STRANGE: Ecosystem services supplied by aquatic ecosystems to adjacent agricultural environments at different scales.

Participation in networks

• Research Infrastructures: Critical Zones in France (OZCAR-RI, https://www.ozcar-ri.org) and Long-Term Ecosystem Research in Europe (eLTER-RI, https://www.lter-europe.net/)
• Regular EGU member
• French Network on “Organic Matter” ResMO

Teaching experience

Hydrology: general introduction. Licence Pro PARTAGER (Institut Agro Rennes, Université de Rennes 1)

Transfers in catchments: Part I Hydrologie. ESA Angers.

Productions

Fovet O, Meric F, Crave A, Cador J-M and Rollet A-J (2023) Early assessment of effects of dam removal on abiotic fluxes of the Selune River, France. Front. Environ. Sci. 11:1231721. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1231721/full

Hrour Y., Thomas Z., Fovet O., Sebari K., Rousseau-Gueutin P. Changes in precipitation and discharge in a Mediterranean catchment as a response to climate change and human activities. Journal of Water and Climate Change 1 September 2022; 13 (9): 3253–3273. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2022.074

Bhaduri B., Sekhar M., Fovet O., Ruiz L. Estimating solute travel times from time series of nitrate concentration in groundwater: Application to a small agricultural catchment in Brittany, France, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 613, Part A, 2022, 128390, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128390

Strohmenger L., Fovet O., Hrachowitz M., Salmon-Monviola J., Gascuel-Odoux C., Is a simple model based on two mixing reservoirs able to reproduce the intra-annual dynamics of DOC and NO3 stream concentrations in an agricultural headwater catchment? Science of The Total Environment, Volume 794, 2021, 148715, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148715

Fovet O, Belemtougri A, Boithias L, et al. Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams: Perspectives for critical zone science and research on socio-ecosystems. WIREs Water. 2021; 8:e1523. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1523

Guillemot, S., Fovet, O., Gascuel-Odoux, C., Gruau, G., Casquin, A., Curie, F., Minaudo, C., Strohmenger, L., and Moatar, F.: Spatio-temporal controls of C–N–P dynamics across headwater catchments of a temperate agricultural region from public data analysis, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 2491–2511, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2491-2021, 2021.

Strohmenger, L., Fovet, O., Akkal-Corfini, N., Dupas, R., Durand, P., Faucheux, M., Gruau, G., Hamon, Y., Jaffrezic, A., Minaudo, C., Petitjean, P., and Gascuel-Odoux, C., 2020. Multi-temporal relationships between the hydro-climate and exports of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in a small agricultural watershed, Water Resour. Res., e2019WR026323. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR026323

Benettin, P., Fovet, O., and Li, L. , 2020. Nitrate removal and young stream water fractions at the catchment scale, Hydrological Processes, 34, 2725-2738. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13781

Fovet, O., Ndom, M., Crave, A., and Pannard, A., 2020. Influence of dams on river water-quality signatures at event and seasonal scales: The Sélune River (France) case study, River Research and Applications, https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3618

Fovet, O., Cooper, D. M., Jones, D. L., Jones, T. G., and Evans, C. D., 2020. Dynamics of dissolved organic matter in headwaters: comparison of headwater streams with contrasting DOM and nutrient composition, Aquatic Sciences, 82, 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-020-0704-6