Olivier Boutron

Tour du Valat, Research Institute for the Conservation of Mediterranean Wetlands · Hydrology

Sea‐level rise (SLR) is expected to cause major changes to coastal wetlands, which are among the world's most vulnerable ecosystems and are critical for nonbreeding waterbirds. Because strategies for adaptation to SLR, such as nature‐based solutions and designation of protected areas, can locally reduce the negative effects of coastal flooding unde...

Coastal regions provide some of the most productive and biodiverse environments with an important and often underappreciated carbon storage potential. At the same time, they are among the areas of highest population density, natural assets and cultural heritage in the world, yet are experiencing significant social, economic and environmental challe...

Anthropogenic barriers such as tidal gates impair animal migration and ecological continuity. For migratory fishes, barriers may alter or impeach both upstream and downstream migrations. Juveniles of European eels, namely glass eels, have to pass those barriers when migrating upstream, whereas they have limited swimming capacities and are dependent...

Understanding spatio-temporal dynamics of glass eel recruitment is necessary to characterize eel population status and the stock of future elvers. Despite numerous studies that have characterized recruitment across Europe, multiple systems along the Mediterranean coasts need a deeper look. We built a Bayesian State-Space Model to investigate the te...

The Vaccarès Lagoon System, located in the central part of the Rhône Delta (France), is a complex shallow coastal lagoon, exposed to a typical Mediterranean climate and a specific hydrological regime affected by man-controlled exchanges with the sea and agricultural drainage channels. In this article, we report the results obtained by a series of m...

Sustainable conservation planning depends on understanding local context including the way social values impact a landscape. Flamingos are used here as a flagship species to focus the social values of a broad range of people living in and working in the Camargue in France. A survey questionnaire (n = 87) was used to identify the range of ways in wh...

Integrated socio-ecological decision-making is important in improving legitimacy in management decisions through effective solutions that avert conflicts. This research examined social perceptions in landscape planning and management with regard to the Greater flamingo, a flagship species along the southern French Coast. A strategic delivery to a c...

Wetlands are critically important for biodiversity and human wellbeing, but face a range of challenges. This is especially true in the Mediterranean region, where wetlands support endemic and threatened species and remain integral to human societies, but have been severely degraded in recent decades. Here, in order to raise awareness of future chal...

For several decades, it becomes possible to delineate waterbodies and their dynamics from optical or radar images, that are now available at high spatial and temporal resolutions. We present here an interpolation approach that takes benefits from this waterbodies delineation in endorheic areas. It consists in computing isovalue contour lines to imp...

The relevant benefits of hyperspectral sensors for water column determination and seabed features mapping compared to multispectral data, especially in coastal areas, have been demonstrated in recent studies. In this study, we used hyperspectral satellite data in the accurate mapping of the bathymetry and the composition of water habitats for inlan...

The present paper is specifically focused on enclosed or semi-enclosed basins where the wind is the dominant driver of water surface tilting, leading to the so-called wind tide contributing to water levels rise. Wind-induced free surface tilting is studied using the 1-D steady form of the depth-averaged shallow water (Saint-Venant) momentum equatio...

Seagrass decline due to a variety of stressors has been observed worldwide. In the shallow Vaccarès lagoon, Camargue, France, the dominant macrophyte species, Zostera noltei, has suffered two major declines since 1996. The first decline was well explained by salinity and turbidity variations, while the second one could not be explained by these par...

After World War II, twenty-nine coastal Salinas (122 km 2), located in the vicinity of coastal lagoons and in deltas, were exploited along the Mediterranean coastlines in South France. Today, only five of these are still actively producing salt, currently representing 175 km 2. Concomitant with the abandonment of many of the smaller Salinas, the la...

A two-dimensional shallow water model with depth-dependent porosity is presented. The pur- pose is the coarse grid simulation of shallow ows over complex topographies and geometries. Two ux closures are examined: the Integral Porosity (IP) and Dual Integral Porosity (DIP) closures. Energy losses are described using a subgrid scale model that accoun...

Evapotranspiration (ET) can be mapped using thermal infrared and spectral reflectance data. Various ET models have been developed but there was no competitive evaluation of them over a large range of situations. Ensemble model averaging is a tool that can be used for deriving ET from multi-model simulations. In this study, we used bayesian model av...

Participatory mapping provides a way to collate a wide range of landscape values providing a visual representation to inform conservation planning. We tested the use of an iconic species, the Greater Flamingo, as a lens for participatory mapping to render explicit the socio-cultural values attributed in a landscape. Spatial information on six lands...

Wild aquatic birds represent a natural reservoir of avian influenza viruses (AIV) that can be spread to poultry. AIV epizootics were associated with huge economic impacts during the last decades and are still of major concern. Within aquatic bird populations AIV are transmitted either by direct contact or through the ingestion of water that has bee...

The spatiotemporal structure of wind-driven circulation patterns and associated water exchanges can drive important bio-hydrodynamic interactions in shallow lagoons. The Vaccarès lagoon system is a complex shallow hydrosystem located in the central part of the Rhône Delta (France). It is internationally recognized as part of a biosphere reserve wit...

The spatiotemporal structure of wind-driven circulation patterns and associated water exchanges can drive important bio-hydrodynamic interactions in shallow lagoons. The Vaccarès lagoon system is a complex shallow hydrosystem located in the central part of the Rhône Delta (France). It is internationally recognized as part of a biosphere reserve wit...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a fundamental variable of the hydrological cycle and its estimation is required for irrigation management, water resources planning and environmental studies. Remote sensing provides spatially distributed cost-effective information for ET maps production at regional scale. We have developed EVASPA tool for mapping ET from...

Oral presentation (EGU Vienna)

The "Ile de Camargue" is a complex hydrosystem, including agricultural drainage basins, marshes, and the brackish shallow Vaccarès lagoon system. This hydrosystem is particularly affected by water management and its endykement from the river and the sea. Decrease of sediment river input to the coast and sea level rise contribute to a global erosion...

Pesticides, which have been extensively used in agriculture, have become a major environmental issue, especially regarding surface and groundwater contamination. Of particular importance are vegetated farm drainage ditches, which can play an important role in the mitigation of pesticide contamination by adsorption onto ditch bed substrates. This ro...

The sanitary microbiological condition of Mediterranean coastal rivers is a growing concern because of its impacts on the compliance of receiving coastal and transitional waters which are of high recreational and economic values. Due to strong anthropogenic pressures, coastal rivers do not often meet the required standards and guidelines, expressed...

Arid and semiarid areas where the temporary rivers and streams occur, account for one third of the earth’s surface land area. However, little is known regarding their hydrologic and biogeochemical behaviour. In the European Community, all water resources have to be monitored following the requirements outlined in the Water Framework Directive (WFD-...

The adsorption of two commonly used pesticides, diuron and tebuconazole, on an organic substrate (hemp), which was chosen as an analogue for natural substrates often found in agricultural ditches, has been studied using three different contact schemes: 1) contact in a beaker using a modified batch method; 2) contact in an experimental flume, with a...

In order to investigate the possible use of geotextiles for the retention of pesticides in agricultural watersheds, batch studies of the adsorption and desorption of three widely used pesticides onto/from commercially available geotextiles were performed. The three pesticides considered were diuron, isoproturon and azoxystrobin. Natural and polymer...

L'étude présentée a pour objectif de mieux comprendre l'influence de l'hydrodynamique sur le transfert de produits phytosanitaires lors d'écoulement dans les fossés agricoles. Quatre paramètres ont plus particulièrement été étudiés : i) la vitesse de l'écoulement de surface ; ii) la submergence, définie comme le rapport moyen entre la hauteur d'eau...