Monitoring of farming landscape changes (1999-2009) in a natural park of eastern France

摘要

The present paper deals with a monitoring of farming landscape changes during the decade 1999-2009, focusing on grassy habitats. The 'Pare Naturel Regional de Lorraine' (PNRL) is a territory of 2200 km2 located in north-eastern France, dominated by agricultural areas. The preservation of landscapes and natural habitats is one of these purposes. PNRL and the Laboratoire Agronomie & Environnement developed a GIS methodology in order to set up a long-term landscape observatory. A representative sample of the variety of landscape contexts was designed, giving an 80 km2 monitored area in the PNRL. The main significant results of this 10-year study concern changes of grassy habitats: grassland area decreased and grassland fragmentation increased, which confirms the same global pattern at the European scale. In the same way, heterogeneity of landscape globally decreased. All of these changes are known to have negative impacts on biodiversity. On the other hand, we show some positive changes: area of grassbuffer-strips along rivers increased, due to new CAP rules.