Marie-Françoise André

Marie-Françoise André, born 21 November 1953 in Paris, is a French geographer and geomorphologist specialized in the study of landscape architecture in the polar regions (Labrador, Spitsbergen, Lapland, Antarctica). She applies her knowledge of stone erosion in the field of heritage preservation, particularly in Angkor. Her research was rewarded with a silver medal from CNRS, the French national center for scientific research.

Biography
A teacher-researcher in geomorphology, she was a member of CNRS's URA 1562 team in Clermont-Ferrand in 1993 and joined the Physical and Environmental Geography Laboratory (GEOLAB) in the same year, when it was created. Lecturer at the University of Limoges in 1994, she has been professor of geography at Clermont-Ferrand the Blaise Pascal University since 1997 and was the director of GEOLAB for nine years (1998–2007). She is a member of the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer and a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France (2010–2015).

Works
After a 3rd cycle thesis (fr:DEA) on the geomorphological evolution of Northern Labrador, her state thesis, defended in 1991, focuses on the dynamics and evolution of the slopes in Spitsbergen. She studies landscape changes over time and the influence of climatic variations in Swedish Lapland and the Antarctic Peninsula. She also publishes epistemological work on geomorphology and French research on the poles.

Since the 2000s, Marie-Françoise André has focused her work on the speed of stone erosion in historic monuments. As part of the multidisciplinary Ta Keo project in Angkor, using photogrammetry and geomatics, her team manages to show the protective role of the forest and therefore the acceleration of the temples' degradation linked to recent deforestation. This work on the causes and rates of degradation of the epidermis of monuments, as well as the link between geomorphology and heritage, was rewarded with a silver medal from the CNRS. She continues her researches in the French Massif Central, in Southern America's Guyana and in the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus.

A teacher emeritus, she has directed around twenty theses, published around sixty articles and written several general works on polar landscapes.

Awards and distinctions

 * CNRS silver medal (2011)