GERMON Jean-Claude

Jean Claude Germon is Honorary Research Director of the INRA. Agronomist engineer (Montpellier), graduate in Pedology (Université de Montpellie) and in General Microbiology and Microbiology of Soils (Institut Pasteur), he has developed studies on the purifying functioning of soils, on the nitrogen cycle in cultivated soils and the bioavailability of nitrogen from organic waste, on gas losses by denitrification and nitrogen protoxide (N2O) emissions by cultivated soils. The work of his team made it possible to develop a method for evaluating these losses on the scale of cultivated plots and led to extrapolations over time and at different territorial scales, highlighting the decisive role of agricultural practices on these losses and gaseous emissions.He was Director of the laboratoire de Microbiologie des sols de l’INRA (1987-1997), was a member of the Conseil scientifique du département SDU of the CNRS and the Conseil Scientifique de la division « Surfaces et interfaces Continentales » division of the INSU, project manager at the MSTP of the Ministère de la Recherch and then at the Agence d’Évaluation de la recherche (AERES). An expert in IPCC working groups involved in the assessment of N2O and CH4 emissions from soils, he is one of the scientists associated by the IPCC with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is a member of the Académie d'Agriculture de France.