Rôle des conditions géographiques sur l'organisation spatiale des réseaux de défense de la Grande Guerre. Application à la Champagne (région de Reims)

How much did the soldiers dig? A quantification of WW1 remains in Argonne, France

“…The “digging depths” (as excavated by the soldiers) of the trenches were defined as the difference between the trench bottom and the top of observed paleosols; these depths range between 1 and 2 m. Combining digging depth with trench width (measured at the base of the trench and varying between 0.6 and 0.9 m) and the fact that the walls of the trenches are subvertical, an extracted sediment volume between 1 and 2.5 m 3 per linear meter of trench is calculated. These volumes are consistent with theoretical instructions of the WW1 era that set trench volume between 1.72 and 2.10 m 3 (Devos et al., ). Robertshaw and Kenyon () produced similar data from excavations on English defensive trenches (trench widths between 0.6 and 0.9 m and depths between 1.5 and 1.8 m).…”

Soil erosion in the Anthropocene: Research needs

“…Integrating these soil losses over a total area of 1262 km 2 that was severely affected by WWI in Flanders resulted in a mean soil loss of 934 t/ha per the four years exceeding by more than two orders of magnitude water erosion rates. Along the more than 700 km WWI battle front (between Flanders and Alsace, France) the displaced soil volumes by shell and mine cratering and trench digging even reached values as high as 1500 to 3000 ton/ha per four years in Argonne (France; Brenot et al ., ) and locally up to 7500 ton/ha per four years (Devos et al ., ). These few case studies clearly illustrate that warfare should be recognized as a major erosion factor with explosion cratering and trench digging as major processes.…”

Potentialités de l’outil LiDAR pour cartographier les vestiges de la Grande Guerre en milieu intra-forestier (bois des Caures, forêt domaniale de Verdun, Meuse)

“…• Les travaux de Jean-Paul Amat sur les forêts de guerre de l'arc meusien (front de l'Argonne à la Woëvre) présentent des réflexions sur les dynamiques pédogénétique et géomorphologique du plateau de Douaumont (forêt domaniale de Verdun, illustration 2), nom donné aux 193 hectares de l'espace domanial maintenus hors aménagement forestier (Amat et de Foucault, 1999 ;Amat, 2001Amat, , 2015 ; • Les recherches de l'université de Reims sur la cartographie des réseaux de défense de la région rémoise et les relations entre le milieu physique et l'organisation du champ de bataille (Devos et al, 2015) ;…”