Mapping the dependency of crops on pollinators in Belgium

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Les forêts anciennes en Wallonie. 2ème partie : Cartographie

Un premier article a démontré que l’identification des forêts anciennes est une étape préalable pour pouvoir leur appliquer un mode de gestion spécifique et protéger le patrimoine qu’elles représentent. Cette deuxième partie énumère les sources historiques disponibles en Wallonie, donne un aperçu de l’état d’avancement du travail de numérisation de ces documents mené par le Service Public de Wallonie et en tire quelques informations très surprenantes sur l’évolution spatiale et temporelle des massifs forestiers de Wallonie depuis deux siècles et demi

SAPOLL : A cross-border action plan for wild pollinators

Wild pollinators in the France-Wallonia-Vlaanderen cross-border zone represent a valuable but highly endangered resource. In order to protect these pollinators, it is essential to set up a cross-border organization that enables coordinated actions and synergies between regions. Indeed, isolated actions on both sides of the border are unlikely to lead to the sustainable management of this indispensable resource. The challenge is huge because wild pollinators, wild bees, syrphs and butterflies, are essential to maintaining agriculture and ecosystems in our regions. In order to meet this challenge, the SAPOLL project initiates the implementation of a cross-border action plan for wild pollinators with the actors from Wallonia, Flanders and northern France. This plan is the initiator of actions in favor of pollinators, bringing the necessary scientific, didactic and applied context to citizens, decision-makers, entrepreneurs or enrionmental managers. It is also adapted to the regional context of each area. The action plan, which is co-built with the partners in the cross-border territory. The SAPOLL project also organizes activities that aim to homogenize and share scientific knowledge, awareness-raising experience and naturalistic competences

Les forêts anciennes en Wallonie. 1ère partie : Concepts généraux

Au cours des siècles, la forêt wallonne a subi de profondes mutations qui marquent encore la structure et le fonctionnement des écosystèmes forestiers actuels. Néanmoins, certaines forêts ont été relativement épargnées. Ces forêts, qualifiées de « forêts anciennes » en raison de la continuité temporelle de leur état forestier, s’avèrent d’un grand intérêt en matière de biodiversité, de naturalité de fonctionnement et de capacité d’adaptation aux changements globaux. Leur reconnaissance et leur identification sont utiles pour assurer une gestion responsable des territoires

Naturalist historical databases help us to better understand plant-bee interactions and their dynamics across space and time

This work highlights the interest of compiling opportunistic naturalist databases and to systematically inform the host plants on which species are observed during sampling time to assess the impact of land-use changes on plant-bee interactions, thanks to unique historical time series. Such initiative is a step forward in the perspective of pollination service mapping and tracking of changes at a biogeographical scale

Combinaison de données issues de la télédétection et de données ancillaires pour améliorer les modèles de distribution d'espèces

Correlative distribution models are increasingly used in biological conservation. They often require the compilation of various environmental attributes (climate, topography, land cover,…), which can be very time-consuming. In the Lifewatch project, a database combining segmentation in homogeneous landscape units (“ecotopes”) and environmental attributes derived from regularly updated remote sensing data (land cover, potential solar energy,…) and other data sources (climate, topography,…) has been designed. Our aim was to assess the usefulness of this database for species distribution modelling and to propose further improvements. The distribution of ten species (four butterflies, three birds, two reptiles and one mammal) was modelled across Wallonia and model performance was assessed by Area Under the ROC Curve using the subsample approach. The models derived from ecotope segmentation and quantitative land cover attributes were compared to those obtained with a corresponding grid and a qualitative land cover database. The usefulness of ancillary data (soil properties, contextual attributes) was assessed to decide which variables should be integrated in the ecotope database. The results allowed us to assess and improve the relevance and accuracy of our database, which is a promising tool for species distribution modellers at the European scale.Lifewatch-W

Combining remote sensing and ancillary data to improve the species distribution models

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