The Study of Life Across Various Scientific Disciplines: A Story of Scale
Abstract
Carbon dioxide is essential to life; it lies at the heart of nature’s bounty. Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria convertCO2like true solar-powered chemical factories. They employ the unique and inspiring mechanisms of photosynthesis, which continue to fascinate scientists across all disciplines.
Carbon dioxide is also at the heart of current climate and environmental concerns. While less inspiring than plant activity, human activities contribute to a sharp increase inCO2emissions,which in 2021 accounted for nearly 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. It is thus partly responsible for climate change, which is already affecting species and ecosystems around the world.
What role can scientific research play in light of this duality? This is a typical example that illustrates the need to combine scientific knowledge with an approach that integrates the various scales of study of living organisms: not only at the temporal and spatial scales of scientific ecology, but also at the level of the individual organization of living things: from the ecosystem to the individual, and then to the very fine scale of the molecule—that is, the scale of chemistry. This interdisciplinary collaboration is a source of solutions inspired by nature and designed for the long term. A few illustrative examples will be presented.
This lecture will be followed by a seminar presented by Dr. Jérôme Chave, Research Director in Integrative Biology, a modeler and ecologist at the CNRS, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His seminar is titled: “Tropical Forest Ecosystems in the Face of Global Warming”