SEEFOREST (BioGeCo / IRSTEA ETBX)

Study of roles of socio-economic and ecological factors on forest socio-ecosystem functioning: example of the Ciron Valley (SEEFOREST).

Linking social and ecological systems is a major goal for understanding the dynamic, present and future, of biodiversity. The strength of socio-ecosystem approaches as we want to develop it in this project, is to integrate ecological sciences and social, economic and political sciences approaches, in order to explore the interactions existing between ecological systems and anthropic organization.

SEEFOREST aims at a better understanding of the relationships between forest practitioners, forest management and biodiversity-based forest ecological functions on the forest socio-ecosystem of the Ciron Valley (South-West of France), based on a narrow interaction between scientists in ecology and scientists in sociology and economics, as well as interactions with two socio-economic partners. The first step will focus on the identification and a clustering analysis of all the forest parcels along the Ciron Valley based on the socio-economic profiles of the forest owners and crude ecological factors. The second step will aim at selecting panel of parcels to lead in one hand socio-economic surveys from forest owners, and in other hand ecological studies, firstly at the whole Ciron Valley scale and second at a finer scale focusing on parcels sharing the same forest ecological type but presenting the most valuable variation of owner socio-economic types.

Focusing on one forest type will allow us to determine a fine-scale model of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning variation according to well-defined socio-ecological profiles of forest owners. Then, cross-analysis of the socio-economic and ecological data will be performed to investigate the respective importance of ecological and socio-economic factors in the structure, composition and biodiversity of the forest socio-ecosystem. Finally, feedbacks to stakeholders will be undertaken with the two socio-economic partners of this project to discuss the results and imagine scenarios to improve and conciliate both forest management and biodiversity conservation.

Project leader : Frédéric Revers (BioGeco) - MAIL
Partners : Irstea Bordeaux,  Syndicat Mixte d’Aménagement du Bassin Versant du Ciron (SMABVC), Centre Régional de la Propriété Forestière (CRPF)
© Photo : Ciron - Alexis Ducousso