Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 6.9
Localization of the Pic Saint Loup area (France)
The natural vegetation is dominated by garrigue, the typical Mediterranean
shrubland ecosystem characterised by discontinuous bushy associations of
calcareous plateaus, often composed of kermes oak, lavender, thyme, and white
cistus, with isolated trees (holm oak and juniper). Agriculture is dominated by
pasture, mainly in silvopastoral systems, olive groves and vineyards, with occasion-
ally agricultural crops (wheat and barley).
The Scenarios
A detailed study of the past and present land-use on the territory of Pic Saint Loup,
based on aerial photography in years 1946, 1962, 1981, 1992 and 2002, showed an
important impact of peri-urban development on biodiversity (Sirami et al.
2007,
2008)
. Following these results, four scenarios were set up, as part of a participatory
process for planning the regional peri-urban and agricultural policy, in an area
dominated by the typical culturally sensitive Mediterranean garrigue shrubland.
They can be summarized according to two axes (Fig. 6.
10
). The abscissa concerns
“nature”, which is more or less rich in biodiversity, corresponding to the environ-
mental quality of natural areas, and the ordinate fluctuates between urban and rural,
which determines the type of urbanization and way of life favoured in each scenario
(Nespoulous
2004)
.
Land-use maps were produced for each scenario and the resulting scenes were
processed with SLE. Two representative viewpoints are presented here
