Section: New Results

Mapping and land use and land cover change for the ESNET project

The ESNET project (EcoSystem services NETworks) is a collaboration lead by LECA (Laboratoire d'ECologie Alpine, UJF) that aims at characterizing the ecosystem services of the Grenoble urban region (about 2/3 of the Isere département) at the 2030/2040 horizon under various constraints of urban policy planning, changes in agricultural and forest management, and climate change impact on ecosystems. A preliminary task in this research program was the elaboration of very detailed maps (both in terms of land use and of resolution) of the study area at three different dates (1998, 2003 and 2009) based on available satellite and IGN data, in order to characterize past land use patterns as well as agricultural rotation patterns. These have been made and completed at Inria with the hiring of specialized engineers in these tasks, funded by the ESNET program. This exercice informs the next task (land use and land cover change – LUCC – modelling). Hosting this work at Inria was not only logical in terms of the available computer environment, but also useful in terms of visibility of Inria from outside planning agencies.

The LUCC model itself is developed partly at Inria (for modelling expertise) and partly at LECA (for expertise on ecological change drivers). The model development is still underway but in a rather advanced stage. Relevant drivers for urban development have been identified and statistically characterized. The so-called "transition potentials" (which characterize change of land use over a given period of time) are in the process of being calibrated. The next steps involve the completion of this calibration task, the development of relevant scenarios (underway by the whole ESNET collaboration) and projections of land use into the future. Some sensitivity analysis will also be performed in order to characterize the robustness of the model.