Portrait of Flore Rembert
July 28th, 2022
Presentation
Flore Rembert, Post-doctoral fellow at ISTO (Porous media team)
Course of study
After studying in engineering school at the University of Strasbourg, Flore obtained the title of engineer from the School and Observatory of Earth Sciences (EOST) and a Master II in geophysics. Thanks to her end-of-study internship in 2017 at BRGM, the national geological survey, on the development of an electrical measurement device for monitoring the fracturing of the surrounding rock for the storage of radioactive waste at the Bure underground laboratory, Flore decided to turn to a research path in the academy. Thus, in January 2018, Flore won a ministerial grant to start a thesis on the development of geoelectric methods for the temporal monitoring of dissolution-precipitation processes in carbonate environments at Sorbonne University, under the supervision of Damien Jougnot (CR CNRS) at the METIS laboratory (UMR 7619) and which she defended in March 2021.
Since April 2021, Flore has started a post-doctoral fellowship funded by LabEx VOLTAIRE, in collaboration with Cyprien Soulaine (ISTO), Sophie Roman (ISTO) and Arnaud Stolz (GREMI), on multiscale geoelectric monitoring to model the reactive transport and multiphase flow in the critical zone.
Research question
Since her thesis work, Flore has been interested in improving the understanding of geoelectric signals and quantifying their coupling to rock structural parameters, hydrodynamic properties and reactive conditions in the pore space. Her research led her to focus on two key processes in hydrogeology: calcite dissolution and precipitation, which she studied through laboratory experiments and by developing petrophysical models.
For her post-doctorate, Flore’s experimental work also aims to improve this understanding of geoelectric signals, through the miniaturization of their acquisition for the realization of experiments on microfluidic chips.
Why study it?
The critical zone is the near-surface environment where most of the drinking water resources and continental life are found. Its study requires an interdisciplinary approach based on the characterization of the mechanisms governing its dynamics and involving air, water, soil, micro-organisms and the rock matrix. In karstic context, calcite dissolution is a key process.
How does she study it?
Geophysical methods propose the development of appropriate techniques for monitoring hydrogeological and biogeochemical processes in a non-intrusive and low cost manner. Among the existing techniques, geoelectrical methods have already proven their ability to monitor such processes. However, their interpretation is often approximate, as it relies on the superposition of several phenomena whose source mechanisms are often microscopic (e.g., surface loading, fluid-fluid or fluid-mineral interfaces, pore clogging).
As part of his postdoctoral research, Flore is developing a geoelectric monitoring device on microfluidic chips. This micrometric scale approach allows to work in well controlled conditions, with a real time monitoring by high spatial resolution and high speed microscopy. This work will allow a better understanding of the geoelectric signatures of the studied processes, in order to improve their interpretation at large scale.