La gestion patrimoniale des forêts anciennes de Wallonie (Belgique)

Kervyn, Thierry; Scohy, Jean-Pierre; Marchal, Didier; Collette, Olivier; Hardy, B.; Delahaye, Laurence; Wibail, Lionel; Jacquemin, Floriane; Dufrêne, Marc; Claessens, Hugues

doi:10.4267/2042/67878

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Belgium (Kervyn et al, 2017) and Great Britain, one of the European countries with the lowest afforestation rate and an even lower proportion of AF (Goldberg et al, 2007). At the international level, the…”

Section: The Conservation Value Of Ancient Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, in Great Britain, Belgium and Germany, converting ancient woodlands into non-native coniferous plantations was so massive during the 19th and 20th centuries that, today, plantations are distinguished from broadleaved forests, the only ones considered to be 'ancient semi-natural woodlands' (Brown, Curtis, & Adams, 2015;Kervyn et al, 2017;.…”

Section: Managing Ancient and Recent Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Historical ecology and ancient forests: Progress, conservation issues and scientific prospects, with some examples from the French case

Bergès

Dupouey

2020

J Vegetation Science

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Forest area has dramatically increased since the beginning or middle of the 19th century in European countries. At least half of the forests present today have grown on formerly cultivated lands, pastures or heathlands. However, net forest expansion largely masks a slow but irretrievable erosion of ancient forests. Meanwhile, forest resource harvesting (biomass, litter) has fundamentally changed during the last two centuries, moving from intensive biomass removal to increased growing stocks in different European countries. This article reviews the current knowledge on the longterm legacies of past land use and forest management practices and their effects on the functions, diversity and composition of understory vegetation of current forest ecosystems. First, we define the concepts of forest continuity and ancient forest. Then, based on the French case, we present the advances in historical sources, which make it possible to better reconstruct the change in land use and forest management practices over the last two hundred years. We review how understory plant communities and their traits respond to forest continuity and to different types of former agricultural uses, both at local and landscape scales. We then address three important issues for conservation and management: the conservation value of ancient forests, the impact of forest management on the ecological integrity of ancient forests, and the under-explored legacies of former forest management practices on soil and understory vegetation. Lastly, we propose five main fronts for future research efforts: (a) explore all types of cartographic, written sources and environmental markers; (b) develop modelling approaches to understand how past land use shapes plant communities; (c) better define the conservation value of ancient forests in conservation and management policies; (d) investigate how drivers of global change interact with forest management and land use legacies and (e) explore land use legacies in mountain and Mediterranean socio-ecological systems.

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Section: The Conservation Value Of Ancient Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Managing Ancient and Recent Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical ecology and ancient forests: Progress, conservation issues and scientific prospects, with some examples from the French case

Bergès

Dupouey

2020

J Vegetation Science

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“…We sought agricultural fields containing charcoal kiln sites in cultivated areas deforested since the time of charcoal production, based on a map of mutations of the Walloon forest since 1777 (Kervyn et al, 2014). In these areas, mean annual precipitation varies from 864 to 1145 mm and mean annual temperature from 9.2 to 10.0°C.…”

Section: Study Sites and Samplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long term change in chemical properties of preindustrial charcoal particles aged in forest and agricultural temperate soil

Hardy

Leifeld

Knicker

et al. 2017

Organic Geochemistry

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Keywords:Preindustrial charcoal kiln Land-use change Biochar X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) 13 C nuclear magnetic resonance ( 13 C NMR) Dichromate oxidation a b s t r a c t Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in terrestrial carbon storage. Nevertheless, the effect of cultivation on long term dynamics of BC in soil has been poorly addressed. To fill this gap, we studied the chemical properties of charcoal particles extracted from preindustrial kilns in Wallonia, Belgium, along a chronosequence of land use change from forest to agricultural soil, up to 200 years of cultivation. Preindustrial charcoal samples were compared with charcoal subjected to short term ageing in a currently active kiln.Cultivation increased the association of charcoal with soil minerals, which is favored by deprotonation of carboxylic acids under liming, thereby enhancing the reactivity of charcoal toward mineral surfaces. The large specific surface area of charcoal, related to its porosity, promotes the precipitation of 2:1 phyllosilicates and CaCO 3 . Both ageing and cultivation decreased the resistance of charcoal to dichromate oxidation, related to an increase in the H/C of charcoal. Differential scanning calorimetry revealed the presence of three fractions of distinct thermal stability. Saturation of carboxylate groups with Ca 2+ under liming decreased the thermal stability of the O-rich, less thermally stable fraction of charcoal. This fraction decreased over time of cultivation, leading to a relative accumulation of the thermally most stable fraction of charcoal. This might result from the preferential loss of the O-rich fraction or the slowdown of charcoal from oxidation via association with minerals. Our results highlight the idea that land use significantly affects the properties of BC through the modification of soil conditions, which might influence the kinetics of BC loss from soil.

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“…These broadleaved forests consist primarily of European oaks, sessile oak and beech (Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière, 2019). In contrast, only 44 % of the 18 th century Walloon forests of Belgium has remained from the original broadleaved forest, the rest being cleared for agriculture on high fertility soils in the North West (30 %) or converted to coniferous plantations (Scots pine, Norway spruce and Douglas-fir) on the poor soils of the Ardennes (26 %, Kervyn et al, 2018). The status of "old growth" forest does not exclude human disturbances, but assumes a relatively limited impact.…”

Section: Land Usementioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of ecosystem adaptation on hydrological model predictions in response to climate change

Bouaziz

Aalbers

Weerts

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. To predict future hydrological behavior in a changing world, often use is made of models calibrated on past observations, disregarding that hydrological systems, hence model parameters, will change as well. Yet, ecosystems likely adjust their root-zone storage capacity, which is the key parameter of any hydrological system, in response to climate change. In addition, other species might become dominant, both under natural and anthropogenic influence. In this study, we propose a top-down approach, which directly uses projected climate data to estimate how vegetation adapts its root-zone storage capacity at the catchment scale in response to changes in magnitude and seasonality of hydro-climatic variables. Additionally, the Budyko characteristics of different dominant ecosystems in sub-catchments are used to simulate the hydrological behavior of potential future land-use change, in a space-for-time exchange. We hypothesize that changes in the predicted hydrological response as a result of 2 K global warming are more pronounced when explicitly considering changes in the sub-surface system properties induced by vegetation adaptation to changing environmental conditions. We test our hypothesis in the Meuse basin in four scenarios designed to predict the hydrological response to 2 K global warming in comparison to current-day conditions using a process-based hydrological model with (a) a stationary system, i.e. no changes in the root-zone storage capacity of vegetation and historical land use, (b) an adapted root-zone storage capacity in response to a changing climate but with historical land use, and (c, d) an adapted root-zone storage capacity considering two hypothetical changes in land use from coniferous plantations/agriculture towards broadleaved forest and vice-versa. We found that the larger root-zone storage capacities (+34 %) in response to a more pronounced seasonality with drier summers under 2 K global warming strongly alter seasonal patterns of the hydrological response, with an overall increase in mean annual evaporation (+4 %), a decrease in recharge (−6 %) and a decrease in streamflow (−7 %), compared to predictions with a stationary system. By integrating a time-dynamic representation of changing vegetation properties in hydrological models, we make a potential step towards more reliable hydrological predictions under change.

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La gestion patrimoniale des forêts anciennes de Wallonie (Belgique)

Cited by 4 publications

References 2 publications

Historical ecology and ancient forests: Progress, conservation issues and scientific prospects, with some examples from the French case

Historical ecology and ancient forests: Progress, conservation issues and scientific prospects, with some examples from the French case

Long term change in chemical properties of preindustrial charcoal particles aged in forest and agricultural temperate soil

The importance of ecosystem adaptation on hydrological model predictions in response to climate change

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