Géomorphologie et gestion du patrimoine naturel : la mémoire de la Terre est notre mémoire

Les autorités du canton de Fribourg (Suisse) ont décidé récemment de se doter d'un plan sectoriel des paysages et des Sites. L'intégration des caractéristiques géomorphologiques dans ce plan d'aménagement a suscité une réflexion approfondie sur l'intérêt de cette discipline et sur les modalités de sa prise en compte dans le cadre de la gestion du milieu naturel. Cet article présente un plan d'action répondant à ces préoccupations. II évoque les défis à surmonter dans les domaines suivants: – recherche fondamentale: - étudier les régions et phénomènes geomorphologiques (Processus et formes) peu connus; - analyser les relations relief – milieu naturel; - étudier le rôle du relief dans la perception du paysage; –recherche appliquée: - collecter les données de base concernant les phénomènes géomorphologiques; - apprécier la valeur des phénomènes géomorphologiques; - cerner les menaces qui pèsent sur les phénomènes géomorphologiques; - proposer des mesures de gestion; –législation: intégrer la protection du patrimoine géomorphologique dans la législation; –information: sensibiliser le public à la valeur du patrimoine géomorphologique

Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) Anomalies' Sampling and Spatial Pattern: Towards convergence of ecological methodologies and GIS technologies

To date, the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) has often been proposed as the foundation for effective spatial management of agriculture and the environment and many land managers have suggested incorporating it in most of the instruments for sustainable agriculture. The LPIS is originally used for registration of agricultural reference parcels considered eligible for annual payments of European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies to farmers. Its intrinsic quality depends on the frequency and magnitude of the discrepancies in area, since some parcels can be under- or over-declared by farmers compared with reference registered within the LPIS. General application of the LPIS therefore depends on our capacity to ¿ first identify and explain the causes of these area discrepancies perceived as anomalies by national CAP payment agencies ¿second, to propose future improvements in its overall quality. From a set of images used during the 2005 Control with Remote Sensing (CwRS) campaign, using the geographic information system (GIS) and ecological methodologies we assessed the quality of the LPIS by identifying the diversity of the existing anomalies. To that end, the ecological sampling method was adapted to the specific case of image-based detection of anomalies. The observed anomalies assemblages obtained from a set of European Member States representing the four types of LPIS were analysed to establish the spatial pattern of the anomalies. We showed that the twelve zones surveyed can be grouped into four different clusters, each individually correlated with the presence of certain categories of LPIS anomaly. Some clusters were more particularly related to the presence of natural and anthropogenic landscape features, whereas others were typified by anomalies which stemmed from the process for creating and updating the LPIS, which accounted for 20% of the anomalies detected. Finally, we also showed that, even if useful for establishing procedures to manage the LPIS, the LPIS typology used in the European Union had no effect on the anomalies assemblage or on the spatial pattern; consequently, the type of LPIS no longer needs to be considered and LPIS anomalies assemblages could be pooled across Europe. In the light of the results obtained, different proposals are made to improve LPIS quality by: ¿ identifying the critical points along the LPIS management chain; ¿ using landscape ecological methodologies to explain the causes of the clusters observed; and ¿ extrapolating the whole results in the CwRS risk analysis to perform ex-ante LPIS anomalies risk map. Keywords: Land Parcel Identification System, Control with Remote Sensing, orthophoto, quality assessment, diversity, spatial pattern, landscape structureJRC.G.3-Agricultur

Evaluating kernels on Xeon Phi to accelerate Gysela application

This work describes the challenges presented by porting parts ofthe Gysela code to the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor, as well as techniques used for optimization, vectorization and tuning that can be applied to other applications. We evaluate the performance of somegeneric micro-benchmark on Phi versus Intel Sandy Bridge. Several interpolation kernels useful for the Gysela application are analyzed and the performance are shown. Some memory-bound and compute-bound kernels are accelerated by a factor 2 on the Phi device compared to Sandy architecture. Nevertheless, it is hard, if not impossible, to reach a large fraction of the peek performance on the Phi device,especially for real-life applications as Gysela. A collateral benefit of this optimization and tuning work is that the execution time of Gysela (using 4D advections) has decreased on a standard architecture such as Intel Sandy Bridge.Comment: submitted to ESAIM proceedings for CEMRACS 2014 summer school version reviewe

Velocity and depth distributions in stream reaches: testing European models in Ecuador

We tested how European statistical hydraulic models developed in France and Germany predicted the frequency distributions of water depth and point-velocity measured in 14 reaches in Ecuador during 25 surveys. We first fitted the observed frequency distributions to parametric functions defined in Europe and predicted the parameters from the average characteristics of reaches (e.g. discharge rate, mean depth and width) using European regressions. When explaining the frequency of three classes of velocity and three classes of depth among reach surveys, the fitted and predicted distributions had a low absolute bias (< 3%). The residual variance of fits relative to the mean class variance was < 18%. The residual variance of predicted frequencies was 30-61% for velocity classes and 20-36% for depth classes. Overall, the European models appeared appropriate for Ecuadorian stream reaches but could be improved. Our study demonstrates the transferability of statistical hydraulic models between widely-separated geographic regions

In vitro induction of lymph node cell proliferation by mouse bone marrow dendritic cells following stimulation with different Echinococcus multilocularis antigens

The immune response of mice experimentally infected with Echinococcus multilocularis metacestodes becomes impaired so as to allow parasite survival and proliferation. Our study tackled the question on how different classes of E. multilocularis antigens (crude vesicular fluid (VF); purified proteinic rec-14-3-3; purified carbohydrate Em2(G11)) are involved in the maturation process of bone-marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) and subsequent exposure to lymph node (LN) cells. In our experiments, we used BMDCs cultivated from either naïve (control) or alveolar echinococcosis (AE)-infected C57BL/6 mice. We then tested surface markers (CD80, CD86, MHC class II) and cytokine expression levels (interleukin (IL)-10, IL-12p40 and tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α) of non-stimulated BMDCs versus BMDCs stimulated with different Em-antigens or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). While LPS and rec-14-3-3-antigen were able to induce CD80, CD86 and (to a lower extent) MHC class II surface expression, Em2(G11) and, strikingly, also VF-antigen failed to do so. Similarly, LPS and rec-14-3-3 yielded elevated IL-12, TNF-α and IL-10 expression levels, while Em2(G11) and VF-antigen didn't. When naïve BMDCs were loaded with VF-antigen, they induced a strong non-specific proliferation of uncommitted LN cells. For both, BMDCs or LN cells, isolated from AE-infected mice, proliferation was abrogated. The most striking difference, revealed by comparing naïve with AE-BMDCs, was the complete inability of LPS-stimulated AE-BMDCs to activate lymphocytes from any LN cell group. Overall, the presenting activity of BMDCs from AE-infected mice seemed to trigger unresponsiveness in T cells, especially in the case of VF-antigen stimulation, thus contributing to the suppression of clonal expansion during the chronic phase of AE infectio

The GGELS Project: European Greenhouse Gases Emissions from Livestock Production Systems LPS Regional Zoning for the Survey of Related Manure Management Practices

According to the Administrative Arrangement (AA) No. AGRI-2008-02451 signed between DG AGRI and DG JRC in 2008, the final expectation of the GGELS project is a more precise quantification of the greenhouse gases emission (GHG) from livestock production in Europe by considering GHG emission all along the production chains. To later analyse and plan European GHG mitigation scenario for the livestock sectors, a particular effort of description of the Livestock Production Systems (LPS) in place in Europe is necessary, livestock production is differing largely over Europe according to the local farming particularities and to the specific practices in vigour. The previous statements asked for considering spatial as well as strategic diversity of LPS existing in Europe and for the classification of LPS. For that, Work Package 2 (WP2) of the GGELS project has to focus on the conceptualisation and build up of a new LPS typology allowing policy makers to precisely identify LPS diversity. Regarding the main scales at which LPS datasets are available to date, LPS typology is planed to be performed at NUTS2 level (region level) in EU27. The dimensions to be considered in the LPS typology must reflect the strategies decided by the breeders according to market and regional (mainly biotic) constraints met in regions; these dimensions have also to point out the major livestock production steps responsible for GHG emission variation between regions such as manures management practices. Concerning manures management practices, since no specific information existed at region level, while JRC expertise on this issue was insufficient, it has been decided to launch a call for tender to select academic parties for a specific study on this issue following a questionnaire approach. To facilitate this task, DG JRC decided to perform a preliminary classification of the NUTS2 zones according to the remaining dimensions plus other regional descriptors such as regional meteorological particularities, economic intensity of the LPS, stocking density or again the potential autonomy to feed reared animals from local crops production. For that, official statistics contained inside databases of the CAPRI (Common Agricultural Policy Regional Impact Analysis) Modelling System have been used to describe diversity and particularities of the LPS (by specie) in every one of the European regions. Independently, by using Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) datasets, classification of the climatic conditions met in Europe have been mapped. All classifications were performed using multivariate statistical procedures such as Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and two-way Hierarchical Ascendant Classification (HAC). Results of the by-specie LPS classifications have been then confronted to the clusters describing climate conditions in regions to interpret LPS diversity. In parallel, other statistics such as regional farm types repartition provided by Eurostat were used to verify of the pertinence of the results obtained from the purely statistical method applied. Then, clusters verified were interpreted by relating all dimensions together to give a picture as reliable as possible of the reality following a more subjective approach; finally, to ease the comprehension of the reader, by-specie LPS clusters were mapped in a GIS environment. Despite possible improvements, the preliminary zoning performed here allowed us to identify and describe reliably the specificities of the LPS in every one of the European regions (EU27). From this, we proposed a by-specie and by-LPS type sampling of the regions. This was undertaken to help the academic party to decide later of the minimum sample size necessary to obtain reliable information on the regional manures¿ management practices in vigour regarding the particularities of the LPS pointed out in this report.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

Non regression testing for the JOREK code

Non Regression Testing (NRT) aims to check if software modifications result in undesired behaviour. Suppose the behaviour of the application previously known, this kind of test makes it possible to identify an eventual regression, a bug. Improving and tuning a parallel code can be a time-consuming and difficult task, especially whenever people from different scientific fields interact closely. The JOREK code aims at investing Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities in a Tokamak plasma. This paper describes the NRT procedure that has been tuned for this simulation code. Automation of the NRT is one keypoint to keeping the code healthy in a source code repository.Comment: No. RR-8134 (2012