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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Serie: ISTE Consignment
- Sprache: Englisch
Territories are currently faced with a wide range of environmental challenges, but suffer from a lack of access to the information and biophysical data that characterizes these challenges.
Territorial Analysis of Environments sheds light on how the data produced on environmental change needs to be processed, completed and disseminated so that local players can take ownership of it. The aim is to present methods for developing local, regional or even global indicators of the changes underway, as well as to understand the logic of the players acting in a given area.
To this end, this book places great emphasis on the notions of systems and the modeling approaches used to formalize them. It also presents the data available, and the methods for developing an analysis of their spatial dimension. This is based on a wide range of case studies, combining environmental data and stakeholder games.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
I.1. The environment – a privileged subject in geography
I.2. The environment – a complex spatial system
I.3. What connects the chapters
I.4. References
PART 1: Interactions and Flows: The Integration of Time
1 Environmental Issues at the Territorial Level
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Consideration of local context effects in environmental changes
1.3. Environmental changes in territorial units
1.4. Conclusion
1.5. References
2 Temporalities of Environmental Changes
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Causalities leading to the emergence of temporal signals
2.3. Modeling and deciphering temporal signals
2.4. Conclusion
2.5. References
3 Simulating Future Environmental Changes and Their Impacts
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Anticipating changes in environmental systems
3.3. Selecting themes for evolution scenarios
3.4. Developing evolution scenarios
3.5. Implementing scenarios and validating simulations
3.6. Feedback on the use of scenarios
3.7. Conclusion
3.8. References
4 Representations of the Flows Generated by Urban Lifestyle
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Representing flows: material and energy flow analyses
4.3. Territorial life cycle assessments
4.4. Footprints
4.5. Conclusion
4.6. References
PART 2: Integration of Stakeholder Dynamics
5 Interactions Among Stakeholders Regarding Environmental Issues
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Stakeholder analysis framework
5.3. Application to the Dunkirk territory
5.4. Conclusion
5.5. References
6 Integration of Participatory Science into Modeling Approaches
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Participatory science in environmental geography…
6.3 …and particularly in landscape ecology
6.4. Modeling ecological networks
6.5. Summary and discussion
6.6. References
PART 3: Modeling Complex Environmental Systems
7 Modeling Anthropogenic Erosive Systems
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Erosion in anthropogenic watersheds: context
7.3. Landscape structure and sediment production
7.4. Landscape structure and sediment transfer
7.5. Conclusion
7.6. References
8 Modeling Landscape Connectivity and Ecological Networks
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Measuring and spatializing connectivity to identify ecological networks
8.3. Concrete examples of ecological network modeling
8.4. Conclusion
8.5. References
List of Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Detail of the criteria for the stakeholder analysis grid
Table 5.2. Detail of the criteria for the stakeholder analysis grid (Col: coll ...
Table 5.3. Coordination analysis grid
Table 5.4. Cross-tabulation of interactions between related stakeholders (S.: ...
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1. Flows as indicators of the spatial structuring of the biophysical ...
Figure I.2. Actors and their interactions
Figure I.3. Water usage system worldwide
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Integration of time in geography. At the top: time and the resulti ...
Figure 1.2. Principle of downscaling and climate data enrichment at fine scale ...
Figure 1.3. Example of projection of the impacts of climate change on vegetati ...
Figure 1.4. Temperature field modeling by GWR integrating local data. A: altit ...
Figure 1.5. Identification of potential refuge areas for vegetation by 2100 (+ ...
Figure 1.6. Illustration of the zoning effect of the Modifiable Area Unit Prob ...
Figure 1.7. Example of fragmentation during the construction of a diachronic m ...
Figure 1.8. Evolution of land use patterns in Anost (Upper Morvan, Saône-et-Lo ...
Figure 1.9. Evolution of land use patterns in Anost (Upper Morvan, Saône-et-Lo ...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Formalization of the Daisyworld model (adapted from Watson and Lov ...
Figure 2.2. Examples of feedback loops and associated time signals
Figure 2.3. Example of combining temporal signals. A: case of the collapse of ...
Figure 2.4. The Chamrousse Ski Resort and the Artificial Snow Supply Hydrologi ...
Figure 2.5. Formalization of the hydrological cascade. Rectangles represent re ...
Figure 2.6. Simulation of stocks and flows in the current context (blue) and w ...
Figure 2.7. Initial state of a virtual forest area
Figure 2.8. State of the virtual forest space after 120 iterations (10 years) ...
Figure 2.9. Evolution of the frequency of different land cover types
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. The different stages of the prospective approach in geography and ...
Figure 3.2. Theoretical example of a change matrix
Figure 3.3. Theoretical example of a transition matrix
Figure 3.4. Potential transition map indicating the likelihood of the artifici ...
Figure 3.5. Map of land use patterns in southeastern France and transition mat ...
Figure 3.6. Processes identified during the analysis of past dynamics
Figure 3.7. Schematic representation of the two main categories of scenarios: ...
Figure 3.8. a) Temporal evolution of additional anthropogenic radiative forcin ...
Figure 3.9. Schematic activity diagram of a multi-agent system model. It enabl ...
Figure 3.10. Outcome from a multi-agent system. The positioning of individuals ...
Figure 3.11. Interface of the multi-agent system developed in the study. The g ...
Figure 3.12. Dynamics of the classified forest and simulation results based on ...
Figure 3.13. Schematic representation of the elements limiting the exploration ...
Figure 3.14. Schematic representation of redundancies in explored futures
Figure 3.15. Integration of the participatory approach within the prospective ...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Iron flow diagram for the German steel industry (figures related t ...
Figure 4.2. Representation of 2020 energy flows mobilized in Auvergne-Rhône-Al ...
Figure 4.3. Raw material balance. a) Midi-Pyrénées, 2006; b) Île-de-France, 20 ...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Descriptive mapping of territorial stakeholders involved in the CO ...
Figure 5.2. Chessboard of stakeholders’ interactions (adapted from Pauline Tex ...
Figure 5.3. Positioning scheme of stakeholders
Figure 5.4. Stakeholder positioning at the turn of the 2010s
Figure 5.5. Analysis of coordinations in the Dunkirk territory at the turn of ...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Various levels of participatory science and research according to ...
Figure 6.2. Participation is not unilaterally decreed. Extract from Ferraton ( ...
Figure 6.3. Visual presentation of the COLLECTIFS research project.
Figure 6.4. Participatory workshops established on September 22, 2018, during ...
Figure 6.5. Participatory workshops for assessing the impact of development sc ...
Figure 6.6. Multi-scale mapping of ecological connectivity in Bordeaux Métropo ...
Figure 6.7. Assessment of the effects of territorial planning scenarios on eco ...
Figure 6.8. Extract from the Miro tool’s whiteboard used to identify species g ...
Figure 6.9. Extract from the Miro tool’s whiteboard used to identify the resis ...
Figure 6.10. Extract from the interactive online map allowing visualization of ...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Some measures of soil loss by erosion (in cultivated contexts). Di ...
Figure 7.2. Evolution of soil losses due to water erosion between 2001 and 201 ...
Figure 7.3. Multiscale description method of landscape structure. A: integrati ...
Figure 7.4. Formalization of the impact of landscape structure on erosive flow ...
Figure 7.5. Example of workflow to model the evolution of soil losses with the ...
Figure 7.6. Evolution of soil losses in a wine-growing region (Mercurey, Burgu ...
Figure 7.7. Calculation of the connectivity IC index (modified from Cavalli et ...
Figure 7.8. Formalization of the structural connectivity of a watershed using ...
Figure 7.9. Simulation of the influence of structural connectivity on the emer ...
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. The matrix-patch-corridor model (adapted from Forman and Godron (1 ...
Figure 8.2. Different types of fragmentation. Example with habitat fragmented ...
Figure 8.3. Concept of ecological network according to Mougenot and Melin (200 ...
Figure 8.4. Differentiated habitat networks for the same landscape and two spe ...
Figure 8.5. Examples of various French land cover databases for the same study ...
Figure 8.6. Various resolutions of geographic data: spatial resolution, themat ...
Figure 8.7. Costs of resistance to movement. Example for a butterfly species ( ...
Figure 8.8. Spatial modeling of ecological connectivity using landscape graphs
Figure 8.9. General methodological approach to identify the ecological network ...
Figure 8.10. Synthesis diagram: the connectivity of squirrel and noctule habit ...
Figure 8.11. Location of new patches to maximize tree frog connectivity in a S ...
Figure 8.12. Prioritization of cells based on the connectivity gain from addin ...
Figure 8.13. Iterative testing of each candidate link for wildlife crossing lo ...
Figure 8.14. Location of the three potential wildlife crossings for each fores ...
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
List of Authors
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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SCIENCESGeography and Demography, Field Director – Denise PumainPhysical Geography, Construction of Environments and LandscapesSubject Head – Etienne Cossart
Territorial Analysis of Environments
Coordinated by
Etienne Cossart
Anne Rivière-Honegger
First published 2024 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2024The rights of Etienne Cossart and Anne Rivière-Honegger to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024943304
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78945-198-6
ERC code:SH7 Human Mobility, Environment, and Space SH7_1 Human, economic and social geography SH7_5 Sustainability sciences, environment and resources SH7_6 Environmental and climate change, societal impact and policy
Introduction
Etienne COSSART1 and Anne RIVIÈRE-HONEGGER2
1 EVS, UMR 5600, CNRS, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France
2 EVS, UMR 5600, CNRS, ENS Lyon, France
Exploring spatial regularities, one of geography’s objectives, reveals the existence of space-organizing systems, none of which, however, hold value applicable across all times and places. The presence of human freedom objectively precludes Laplacian determinism from being universally operative within our discipline.
Olivier Dollfus (1985)
I.1. The environment – a privileged subject in geography
Current environmental issues, driven by strong social demand, stimulate a broad scientific community encompassing both experimental sciences (e.g. Earth, atmospheric and climate sciences) and environmental humanities (e.g. history, sociology and law). It is currently observed that, within this multidisciplinary framework, geographers occupy a minority position (Blanc et al. 2017; Cossart 2023). However, the legitimacy of geography in addressing environmental issues lies in the very foundations of this academic discipline which, at the beginning of the 20th century, was the only human science that did not detach itself from the study of interactions between societies and the environment they inhabit, as evidenced by numerous works of the Vidalian school of thought. Such a trajectory is interpreted in part to have resulted from the internal subdivisions of the discipline, which during the 1980s and 1990s led to the development of distinct schools of thought: one focused on studying biophysical processes through approaches akin to experimental sciences (physical geography) and the other emphasizing social, cultural and territorial aspects, particularly through constructivist approaches (human geography of the environment) (Lespez and Dufour 2021). Undoubtedly, the strained relationships between members of these communities initially hindered intra-disciplinary cooperation, which could have facilitated the integration of both biophysical and social aspects of environmental issues within geography (Cossart 2023). Furthermore, these tensions undeniably diminished the visibility of geography at a time when environmental issues were becoming increasingly prominent. One primary objective of this book is to bring together authors from both major research modalities in environmental geography, a term we use here to encompass both physical geography strictly speaking and human geography of the environment. This endeavor is not unprecedented and aligns with previous efforts to merge these two approaches (Mathevet and Godet 2015; de Bélizal et al. 2017; Dufour and Lespez 2020) or, at the very least, to survey possible positions between these two spheres (Chartier and Rodary 2016).
NOTE.– The term “environment” is used here in its etymological sense of circumfusa (the surrounding things), closely aligned with the meaning employed by hygienists in the 19th century: to understand how surrounding elements such as water, air and soil influence health, well-being and, to some extent, human activities. Current research in environmental geography articulates three objectives: monitoring changes in environmental quality (physical, chemical, biological, ecological and social); assessing the extent to which these changes are attributable to human activities and initiating conservation and environmental remediation efforts (Cossart 2023).
To ensure that this book contributes an additional brick to building this interdisciplinary consolidation, we aimed to position it based on another observation made (albeit less emphasized) regarding environmental geography. One critical hypothesis explaining the decline of geography compared to other environmental sciences is the perceived lack of generalization in the contributions of the discipline and, more broadly, deficiencies in conceptualization (Pumain 2002). This deficiency was already noted in the 1980s when Fernand Joly (1989) and Olivier Dollfus (1993) discussed the need to move beyond the notion of a “transversal” or “synthetic” science and to continue refining the formalization of the functional relationships between societies and their environment, akin to the work of Georges Bertrand and Jean Tricart (Bertrand and Tricart 1968; Bertrand and Bertrand 2014).
The challenge lies in the fact that these functional relationships are manifold: as soon as a human dimension is introduced into a geographical explanation, the freedom of action creates a diversity of potential strategies, a diversity that is difficult to model (Dollfus 1985). The reasoning being that addressing environmental issues thus grapples with the formalization of cause-and-effect relationships: they oscillate between two distinctly different notions of logic. Firstly, strict causal relationships can be employed, meaning the so-called “necessary and sufficient” conditions. However, they ultimately lead to a problem of determinism, viewed here as a constraining, generalizable causal system between the characteristics of the environment and the societies that inhabit it. On the contrary, many explanations require the combination of conditional relationships, characterized by a level of probability, leading to a problem of probabilism, namely the inability to achieve a level of certainty, but only to probable propositions. In short, between probabilism and determinism, achieving a higher level of generality is a challenge when developing geographical reasoning applied to environmental issues.
The aim of this volume stems from this observation, which is why the perspective is resolutely methodological. This book cannot be exhaustive; its more modest aim is to present a corpus of methods and frameworks to aid in developing a geographical and territorialized reasoning of environmental issues. The challenge lies in being able to encompass biophysical processes and social facts, and thus study their proper articulation.
I.2. The environment – a complex spatial system
I.2.1. Systems, structures and flows
One of the objectives of this book is to avoid separating processes related to human activities from biophysical processes, but rather to consider them as part of the same spatial system. This system is complex, according to the theory of complexity (Morin 2005): it is characterized by numerous interactions, varying in time and space, which can serve as both drivers of environmental evolution and guarantors of homeostasis. The essence of geography lies in identifying regularities in the arrangement of environmental phenomena and understanding the extent to which these arrangements result from interactions between objects of various natures, whether biophysical or anthropogenic. Depending on the geographic perspective, these objects may share a location or interact according to the laws of spatiality (such as distance friction, attraction or repulsion effects), thereby generating flows. Flows serve as excellent indicators of the forces driving a spatial system (Figure I.1): they hold a prominent position in this book, encompassing flows that drive the biophysical environment (such as water, species and sediments), as well as flows of matter influenced by the activities of societies within a territory or city, thereby defining urban metabolism (Barles 2009).
Figure I.1.Flows as indicators of the spatial structuring of the biophysical environment (adapted from Feuillet et al. 2019).
The flows driving the evolution of biophysical environments document their reactions to environmental changes, whether due to climate forcing or anthropogenic modifications. Spatial analysis of these flows aims particularly to comprehend factors that facilitate or impede them: in landscape ecology or geomorphology, they organize according to a landscape and territorial structure. This structure’s framework supports the flows, and its geometry, comprising both strong and weak links (see Figure I.1C), determines how these systems respond to external stimuli. Building upon this, numerous studies debate the extent to which human activities prompt a reorganization of these circulations (Bourgeois et al. 2017).
I.2.2. Opening black boxes
In a systemic analysis, defining the constituent elements of the system is a prerequisite that demands great rigor: it entails opening black boxes (or at least defining ambiguous terms). This vigilance, although conventional, is especially critical in the environmental domain, where the lexicon includes numerous “suitcase words” that impede scientific reasoning. Terms like Human, Nature, Vegetation and Water are examples of these overly broad terms, necessitating a nuanced characterization of their state to be effectively incorporated into a demonstration. The goal of this definitional effort is particularly to adopt a nuanced perspective on issues that may initially easily sway opinion (evaluate, manage, protect, save the planet), whereas they actually require critical scrutiny (sometimes coupled with temporal reflection) (Beringuier et al. 2015).
As an example, vegetation is an element with an often idealized role in environmental studies when not described in detail. There is a risk that, through broad strokes of “vegetation cover rates”, the more qualitative aspects (multistratified nature of a formation, ecological diversity, biomass production capacity) remain obscured. An overly superficial approach can lead to biases in analysis, as can be seen in many studies of urban vegetation. Plants are perceived as a panacea, yet the urban environment significantly shortens tree lifespan, due to the stress that it imposes, greatly tempering expected positive effects such as carbon storage (Grésillon 2021). In addition, beneath vegetation lies the soil, often overlooked. However, urban greening often requires reconstructing soils through exogenous inputs (from another, peri-urban or rural area?), whose environmental impact warrants questioning (Grésillon et al. 2023).
The “H” of the Human is also emblematic of the need to “open black boxes”. Typologies of actors exist for this purpose (Figure I.2), and we can attempt to compile a table to illustrate some environmental issues associated with them:
– Do we consider a human-individual an actor in the studied system, merely representative of their individual actions? At this level, it is crucial to document the perceptions and representations of objects in the biophysical environment by individuals. These perceptions are shaped by life trajectories (such as education, social status, culture, period in which we live). This leads to environmental amnesia, sometimes referred to as “shifting reference syndrome”, extensively documented by environmental psychologists (Fleury and Prévot 2017). Each individual constructs an environmental reference framework during adolescence. Consequently, each generation tends to forget that this benchmark (considered normal) is already degraded compared to that of previous generations. Consequently, this syndrome impedes collective awareness of environmental changes (Fleury and Prévot 2017).
– Do we consider a collective of human-individuals living in a group on a given space, and whose collective behavior emerges from the sum of interactions between individuals? At this level, for example, the functioning of a society, which has appropriated a territory, and which is characterized by a common culture and political organization, is documented. However, societal issues and associated environmental priorities vary over time. Stéphane Costa (oral communication) illustrates this through the case of Mont-Saint-Michel: it was “at sea” (and constituted a refuge zone), it was on land (allowing the development of grazing), before being returned to the sea (with the objective of renaturalization). Beyond the technical aspects, the coastline is where local actors have collectively decided, depending on the issues of the moment.
– A political stakeholder, or even the state, can hide behind the “H”. The contradictions between the time of the environment and the time of politics then emerge: environmental remediation strategies, requiring a long time (multidecade or even longer), are deployed well beyond electoral mandates. Faced with elected officials who seek to act quickly in the face of the pace of elections, it is difficult to define forward-looking strategies on the horizon of half a century or a century.
– Finally, there may be an “H” as an agent in the sense of economists, meaning a natural or legal person participating in economic activity.
These actors interact with each other: they cooperate and they oppose one another. Modeling their interactions is a task that is sometimes enriched by contributions from other social sciences: political science, for example, can aid in analyzing conflicts that arise during these interactions among actors. Defining the actors and their interactions within a territory is particularly crucial in geography because each actor operates at a distinct level. For this reason, two chapters will be dedicated to exploring the effective integration of actors in environmental studies.
Figure I.2.Actors and their interactions (adapted from Brunet 2017)
The concept of actors is closely intertwined with the notion of territory, a concept we deliberately emphasize starting from the title of the book. Environmental issues are deeply embedded within territories, and territories are delineated based on diverse biophysical contexts, characterized by local specificities. Describing, analyzing and then synthesizing the biophysical processes within each territorial unit (at the level of individual plots as well as at broader scales) pose a significant challenge. However, effectively articulating biophysical data (free from administrative boundaries) with human, social and economic data, often aggregated within geographic units such as territorial cells, is crucial for identifying correlations and highlighting spatial associations or dissociations among phenomena.
Two primary types of data processing are typically required. Firstly, there is a need to downscale to disaggregate spatial information, incorporating local characteristics to enrich geographical data and align it with the territorial level of analysis. Likewise, it may also be necessary to summarize local information into a more encompassing level for purposes of synthesis, simplification or cartographic generalization (Cossart 2024). Several chapters provide concrete examples of how this processing of spatialized data can facilitate the articulation of biophysical and social phenomena within a territory.
I.2.3. Formalizing systems
To comprehend the environmental challenges impacting territories, the task at hand is to study jointly, rather than separately, the interactions between objects of diverse natures, yet sharing a common location. Embodied by the concept of a socio-ecological system (Box I.1), these conceptual frameworks were established as early as the 1970s by colleagues like François Durand-Dastès (1977). This entails formalizing interaction systems that encompass both biophysical environments, socio-economic data and the articulation of societies’ needs in terms of uses and developments (Figure I.3). This scientific endeavor undergoes continuous refinement owing to the proliferation and diversification of data sourced from both the humanities and social sciences, as well as experimental sciences. These datasets facilitate a deeper understanding of the territorial intricacies of contemporary environmental challenges, both locally and globally.
Box I.1.The concept of socio-ecological systems
Socio-ecological systems
“A socio-ecological system comprises natural physical elements (soil, water, rock, living organisms), the outcomes of human activities (food, money, buildings, television, pollution, churches), as well as the forms of interactions existing among humans or between them and their environment” (Mathevet and Bousquet 2014).
Analyzing such a system involves describing its boundaries and operational principles, quantifying certain elements (carbon dioxide concentration in the air, population size, debt), examining the variables influencing exchanges between subsystems or components, within and outside this system (Lagadeuc and Chernokian 2009). Its dimensions, configuration and limits vary depending on the issue addressed and the study’s objective. Thus, investigating changes in land use within a watershed is essential for understanding fluctuations in water quality at the outlet.
Socio-ecological systems are generally open, meaning they are traversed by flows of information, materials or organisms from the outside. Interactions between the components of the system can be ecological (plant production, winter bird migration, etc.) or socio-economic (production, withdrawals, pollution, forms of appropriation and sharing of nature and resources, etc.).
Figure I.3.Water usage system worldwide (adapted from Durand-Dastès 1977).
The role of fieldwork is paramount in generating this data and, more broadly, in advancing knowledge. It is rooted in a methodological stance situated within the dialectics of geography. “Engaging in fieldwork is both obvious and unthought-of, but also intrinsic to the identity of the geographer” (Calbérac 2010). Key methodologies specific to fieldwork include measurement, observation, interviews and questionnaires. Throughout the chapters, the differences and complementarities between quantitative and qualitative approaches will be examined.
Moreover, in a context where environmental changes are accelerating, time has become crucial. This involves not only documenting and quantifying these changes but also modeling the complex trajectories that arise from the interplay of biophysical, social and economic forces.
I.3. What connects the chapters
The chapters have been structured in a progressive manner, aiming to depart from conventional object-based approaches commonly employed in environmental geography (such as water, soil and vegetation). While some chapters may focus on specific themes, the intention is to gradually aid in the proper formalization of a complex environmental system.
Chapters 1 to 4 elucidate the conceptual frameworks of spatial systems analysis, emphasizing the notion of interaction. The interactions under examination here are spatial, occurring between objects of diverse nature (as mentioned above), and they also unfold over time (Clauzel et al. 2018). Characterizing the temporal aspects of these interactions is essential for understanding these systems and, consequently, for developing prospective scenarios. Moreover, interactions manifest as flows. From a scientific perspective, investigating flows is a crucial method for monitoring environmental systems, formalizing and comprehending their evolutionary trajectory. In addition to the traditional cases of water, sediment and species flows, we have chosen to include material flows generated by urban metabolism. Chapter 4 serves to remind that environmental geography, until about a decade ago, was predominantly focused on rural territories rather than urban ones. It also introduces environmental assessment methods derived from engineering sciences, which are highly suitable for territorial contexts.
Chapters 5 and 6 delve into the role of the “H” of Humans in environmental discourse. Without revisiting the necessity of developing constructivist approaches to the environment, which are already well-established, these chapters address two complementary aspects: the characterization of actors and their relationships within a territory, drawing upon analysis frameworks from the social sciences and the effective alignment between actors and the scientific realm for the collection and/or interpretation of novel data, as well as to support decision-making.
The final section of this book showcases examples of formalizing systems that integrate the human dimension into environmental considerations. These chapters are thematically focused, built upon case studies in geomorphology (soil resources) and landscape ecology (biodiversity management). However, beyond the presented issues, methodological aspects take center stage: both chapters share the presentation of formal frameworks that aid in modeling complex environmental systems and assessing all the interplays between anthropogenic and biophysical dimensions.
The continuity across these three main sections is inherently linear. It cannot encompass all interactions between the chapters. Hence, multiple cross-references are provided. Some repetitions are inevitable to ensure that chapters can be read and understood independently. Nevertheless, the true value of this book lies in the coherence and progression between its chapters. We hope this progression will offer readers various avenues for reflection, allowing them to grasp environmental issues in their full complexity.
I.4. References
Barles, S. (2009). Urban metabolism of Paris and its region.
Journal of Industrial Ecology
, 13(6), 898–913.
de Bélizal, E., Fourault-Cauet, V., Germaine, M.-A., Temple-Boyer, E. (2017).
Géographie de l’environnement
. Armand Colin, Paris.
Beringuier, P., Blot, F., Rivière-Honegger, A. (2015). Introduction : les SHS et les questions environnementales, manières de voir, manières de faire, postures de recherche.
Sciences de la société
, 96 [Online]. Available at:
http://journals.openedition.org/sds/3078
.
Bertrand, C. and Bertrand, G. (2014). La nature-artefact : entre anthropisation et artialisation, l’expérience du système GTP (Géosystème-Territoire-Paysage).
L’Information géographique
, 78, 10–25.
Bertrand, G. and Tricart, J. (1968). Paysage et géographie physique globale. Esquisse méthodologique.
Revue géographique des Pyrénées et du Sud-Ouest
, 39(3), 249–272.
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PART 1Interactions and Flows: The Integration of Time
1Environmental Issues at the Territorial Level
Etienne COSSART
EVS, UMR 5600, CNRS, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France
1.1. Introduction
Studying environmental issues encompasses a triple objective: to monitor changes in the quality of the living environment (biophysical, ecological and social); to understand the extent to which human settlement contributes to these changes of state; and finally, to help formalize remediation strategies in a decision-support approach. The notion of change is central and is part of the paradigm of global change. The notion of global change emphasizes understanding the short- and long-term interactions between climate, the biosphere, the ocean, the solid Earth and, of course, human activities (Goudie 2017). Particularly formalized in the development of the Gaia Hypothesis (Lovelock and Margulis 1974; Lovelock 1993), this notion serves as the basis of a conceptual framework that invites us to consider the Earth as a whole, as a complex system that interacts with multiple parts. These parts are all spatial subsystems, the mechanisms of which geographers must study and ultimately formalize the modalities through which they manifest in the territories.
One of the difficulties encountered in this work is that a spatial system is driven by multiple interactions, which are not necessarily synchronous but linked over time. François Durand-Dastès (2001) emphasizes the importance of temporal factors in the geographer’s explanatory arsenal (Figure 1.1), particularly the weight of legacies and the effects of “path dependence”. Environmental changes are phenomena in which history matters: what happened in the past persists due to resistance to change. As a result, interactions, or mechanisms formalized, for example, in sagittal diagrams schematizing the operation of spatial systems, must consider the arrow of time (Figure 1.1). The methods for reconstructing continuous time will be presented in the following chapter. This chapter explains how reconstructing the evolutionary trajectories of the environment enable the necessary step back to identify and interpret the environmental changes that affect territories.
Figure 1.1.Integration of time in geography. At the top: time and the resulting diachronic explanatory relationships are part of the three main explanatory relationships in geography. At the bottom: principle of integrating continuous time from a simple sagittal diagram (adapted from Durand-Dastès 2001)
