Les dynamiques spatio-temporelles de l'occupation du sol en Seine-et-Marne et leurs conséquences sur la biodiversité

International audienceLes modifications de l'occupation du sol liées aux évolutions multidimensionnelles des territoires (démographie, infrastructures, urbanisation,…) constituent l'une des causes majeures de la perte globale de la biodiversité. Pour faire face aux enjeux associés, les acteurs de l'aménagement et de la gestion des territoires doivent pouvoir articuler la préservation de la biodiversité et leurs pratiques. La création d'outils d'aide à la décision basés sur des observations fiables apparaît nécessaire. L'Atlas dynamique de la biodiversité (co-construction CG Seine-et-Marne, UMR 7204 CERSP, UMR 7533 LADYSS) a pour objectif de fournir un tel outil, qui détaillera de façon spatiale et temporelle la biodiversité du département ainsi que les pressions anthropiques qui la menacent. Cette présentation fait une synthèse de l'approche et des résultats obtenus lors de travaux engagés dans le cadre d'une thèse inscrite dans le développement de cet outil. L'objectif est d'établir les conséquences des dynamiques spatio-temporelles de l'occupation du sol sur la biodiversité fonctionnelle de Seine-et-Marne depuis les années 80. A la croisée de la géographie et de l'écologie, ce travail présente la particularité d'une approche intégrative allant de la description des dynamiques spatiales de l'occupation du sol à la création de modèles permettant de comprendre et visualiser les modifications de la diversité fonctionnelle depuis les années 80

Measuring rewilding progress

Rewilding is emerging as a promising restoration strategy to enhance the conservation status of biodiversity and promote self-regulating ecosystems whilst re-engaging people with nature. Overcoming the challenges in monitoring and reporting rewilding projects would improve its practical implementation and maximise its conservation and restoration outcomes. Here, we present a novel approach for measuring and monitoring progress in rewilding that respond to a pressing need for developing monitoring guidelines informed by the best available science. We devised a bi-dimensional framework for assessing the recovery of processes and their natural dynamics through a) decreasing human forcing on ecological processes and b) increasing natural complexity of ecosystems. The framework incorporates the reduction of material inputs and outputs associated with human management, as well as the restoration of natural stochasticity and disturbance regimes, landscape connectivity and trophic complexity. Furthermore, we provide a list of potential activities for increasing ecosystem complexity after reviewing the evidence for the effectiveness of common restoration actions. For illustration purposes, we apply the framework to three flagship restoration projects in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Argentina. This approach has the potential to broaden the scope of ecological restoration, facilitate sound decision-making and connect the science and practice of rewilding.Comunidad de MadridREMEDINAL-3National Science Centre in Polan

Creating ecologically sound buildings by integrating ecology, architecture and computational design

1. Research is revealing an increasing number of positive effects of nature for humans. At the same time, biodiversity in cities, where most humans live, is often low or in decline. Tangible solutions are needed to increase urban biodiversity. 2. Architecture is a key discipline that has considerable influence on the built-up area of cities, thereby influencing urban biodiversity. In general, architects do not design for biodiversity. Conversely, urban conservation planning generally focuses on the limited space free of buildings and does not embrace architecture as an important discipline for the creation of urban green infrastructure. 3. In this paper, we argue that the promotion of biodiversity needs to become a key driving force of architectural design. This requires a new multi-species design paradigm that considers both human and non-human needs. Such a design approach needs to maintain the standards of the architectural profession, including the aim to increase the well-being of humans in buildings. Yet, it also needs to add other stakeholders, organisms such as animals, plants and even microbiota. New buildings designed for humans and other inhabitants can then increase biodiversity in cities and also increase the benefits that humans can derive from close proximity to nature. 4. We review the challenges that this new design approach poses for both architecture and ecology and show that multi-species-design goes beyond existing approaches in architecture and ecology. The new design approach needs to make ecological knowledge available to the architectural design process, enabling practitioners to find architectural solutions that can facilitate synergies from a multi-species perspective. 5. We propose that a first step in creating such a multi-species habitat is the design of buildings with an ecolope, a multi criteria-designed building envelope that takes into account the needs of diverse organisms. Because there is no framework to design such an ecolope, we illustrate how multi-species design needs to draw on knowledge from ecology, as well as architecture, and design computation. 6. We discuss how architectures designed via a multi-species approach can be an important step in establishing beneficial human-nature relationships in cities, and contribute to human well-being and biodiversity conservation.Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog

A Holistic Landscape Description Reveals That Landscape Configuration Changes More over Time than Composition: Implications for Landscape Ecology Studies

International audienceBackground: Space-for-time substitution—that is, the assumption that spatial variations of a system can explain and predict the effect of temporal variations—is widely used in ecology. However, it is questionable whether it can validly be used to explain changes in biodiversity over time in response to land-cover changes.Hypothesis: ere, we hypothesize that different temporal vs spatial trajectories of landscape composition and configuration may limit space-for-time substitution in landscape ecology. Land-cover conversion changes not just the surface areas given over to particular types of land cover, but also affects isolation, patch size and heterogeneity. This means that a small change in land cover over time may have only minor repercussions on landscape composition but potentially major consequences for landscape configuration.Methods: sing land-cover maps of the Paris region for 1982 and 2003, we made a holistic description of the landscape disentangling landscape composition from configuration. After controlling for spatial variations, we analyzed and compared the amplitudes of changes in landscape composition and configuration over time.Results: For comparable spatial variations, landscape configuration varied more than twice as much as composition over time. Temporal changes in composition and configuration were not always spatially matched.Significance: The fact that landscape composition and configuration do not vary equally in space and time calls into question the use of space-for-time substitution in landscape ecology studies. The instability of landscapes over time appears to be attributable to configurational changes in the main. This may go some way to explaining why the landscape variables that account for changes over time in biodiversity are not the same ones that account for the spatial distribution of biodiversity

The road to integrate climate change projections with regional land‐use–biodiversity models

Current approaches to project spatial biodiversity responses to climate change mainly focus on the direct effects of climate on species while regarding land use and land cover as constant or prescribed by global land-use scenarios. However, local land-use decisions are often affected by climate change and biodiversity on top of socioeconomic and policy drivers. To realistically understand and predict climate impacts on biodiversity, it is, therefore, necessary to integrate both direct and indirect effects (via climate-driven land-use change) of climate change on biodiversity.In this perspective paper, we outline how biodiversity models could be better integrated with regional, climate-driven land-use models. We initially provide a short, non-exhaustive review of empirical and modelling approaches to land-use and land-cover change (LU) and biodiversity (BD) change at regional scales, which forms the base for our perspective about improved integration of LU and BD models. We consider a diversity of approaches, with a special emphasis on mechanistic models. We also look at current levels of integration and at model properties, such as scales, inputs and outputs, to further identify integration challenges and opportunities.We find that LU integration in BD models is more frequent than the other way around and has been achieved at different levels: from overlapping predictions to simultaneously coupled simulations (i.e. bidirectional effects). Of the integrated LU-BD socio-ecological models, some studies included climate change effects on LU, but the relative contribution of direct vs. indirect effects of climate change on BD remains a key research challenge.Important research avenues include concerted efforts in harmonizing spatial and temporal resolution, disentangling direct and indirect effects of climate change on biodiversity, explicitly accounting for bidirectional feedbacks, and ultimately feeding socio-ecological systems back into climate predictions. These avenues can be navigated by matching models, plugins for format and resolution conversion, and increasing the land-use forecast horizon with adequate uncertainty. Recent developments of coupled models show that such integration is achievable and can lead to novel insights into climate–land use–biodiversity relations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GrassPlot v. 2.00 – first update on the database of multi-scale plant diversity in Palaearctic grasslands

Abstract: GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phyto- coenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of GrassPlot. The current version (GrassPlot v. 2.00) contains a total of 190,673 plots of different grain sizes across 28,171 independent plots, with 4,654 nested-plot series including at least four grain sizes. The database has improved its content as well as its functionality, including addition and harmonization of header data (land use, information on nestedness, structure and ecology) and preparation of species composition data. Currently, GrassPlot data are intensively used for broad-scale analyses of different aspects of alpha and beta diversity in grassland ecosystems

Species-area relationships in continuous vegetation : evidence from Palaearctic grasslands

Aim Species–area relationships (SARs) are fundamental scaling laws in ecology although their shape is still disputed. At larger areas, power laws best represent SARs. Yet, it remains unclear whether SARs follow other shapes at finer spatial grains in continuous vegetation. We asked which function describes SARs best at small grains and explored how sampling methodology or the environment influence SAR shape. Location Palaearctic grasslands and other non‐forested habitats. Taxa Vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens. Methods We used the GrassPlot database, containing standardized vegetation‐plot data from vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens spanning a wide range of grassland types throughout the Palaearctic and including 2,057 nested‐plot series with at least seven grain sizes ranging from 1 cm2 to 1,024 m2. Using nonlinear regression, we assessed the appropriateness of different SAR functions (power, power quadratic, power breakpoint, logarithmic, Michaelis–Menten). Based on AICc, we tested whether the ranking of functions differed among taxonomic groups, methodological settings, biomes or vegetation types. Results The power function was the most suitable function across the studied taxonomic groups. The superiority of this function increased from lichens to bryophytes to vascular plants to all three taxonomic groups together. The sampling method was highly influential as rooted presence sampling decreased the performance of the power function. By contrast, biome and vegetation type had practically no influence on the superiority of the power law. Main conclusions We conclude that SARs of sessile organisms at smaller spatial grains are best approximated by a power function. This coincides with several other comprehensive studies of SARs at different grain sizes and for different taxa, thus supporting the general appropriateness of the power function for modelling species diversity over a wide range of grain sizes. The poor performance of the Michaelis–Menten function demonstrates that richness within plant communities generally does not approach any saturation, thus calling into question the concept of minimal area.publishedVersio

Dynamique de la végétation en relation avec la température dans l'agglomération rennaise.

30 p.Mémoire de Master2 Environnement BE

Dynamique de la végétation en relation avec la température dans l'agglomération rennaise.

30 p.Mémoire de Master2 Environnement BE