His research interests are in passive and active microwave remote sensing of soil and vegetation. He has developed 2-Parameter (Soil Moisture and Vegetation Optical Depth) retrieval methods at the basis of the inversion approach proposed for the ESA/SMOS mission (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) and coordinated the development of the L-MEB model (L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere), the forward model of the SMOS operational algorithm. Recently, he has coordinated the development of SMOS-IC, an alternate SMOS product of Soil Moisture and Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) at L-band.
He is currently working on the use of the SMOS-IC L-VOD product, a vegetation index related to the total vegetation water content, to monitor the impact of droughts on both cultivated and natural vegetation ecosystems (Amazon and Congo basins, Sahel, northern and temperate environments, etc.), in the context of climate change.