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 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 now operational, thanks to a major effort on this front in 2014. Both transitions from non urban to urban and use and changes of agricultural practices are now calibrated and validated. The first scenario has been successfully simulated in terms of land use. The three other scenairios of the project are in the final stage of elaboration before simulation, so that the land use change simulation phase of the ESNET project should be completed by the end of April, 2015.

Two resarch papers are in the process of being written on the question of land use practices and their evolution in the study area, and a third one on issues of principle in land use modelling is also underway.