Simon Dufour

Université de Rennes 2 | UR2 · Department of Geography and Spatial Planning

Riparian zones are the paragon of transitional ecosystems, providing critical habitat and ecosystem services that are especially threatened by global change. Following consultation with experts, 10 key challenges were identified to be addressed for riparian vegetation science and management improvement: (1) Create a distinct scientific community by...

1. Riparian vegetation supports high biodiversity providing many services and is, therefore, an important landscape element. Riparian ecosystems are subject to numerous pressures leading to population decline and genetic erosion of riparian plants. This may have cascading effects at various ecosystem levels, including decreasing ecosystem services,...

1. Riparian zones are vital areas of interaction between land and rivers and are often degraded by several pressures such as urbanisation, intensive agriculture and river engineering works. 2. This policy brief provides five key policy messages and recommendations to be considered by policy-makers, scientists, managers, and stakeholders to enhance...

La restauration de la continuité écologique du fleuve Sélune se traduit par un aménagement actif correspondant à l’arasement de deux grands barrages hydroélectriques (hauteurs de 36 m et 16 m) sans précédent en Europe. Le programme scientifique comprend une analyse de la recolonisation spontanée de l’ancien lac de Vezin (une longueur de 19 km pour...

This paper comprises an overview of the riverine, swamp, floodplain forests and scrub throughout the continent. The team of researchers from various European countries has considered most of the forest habitats from the Canary Islands to European Russia. It was a difficult task to gather all the knowledge about this type of vegetation across the...

River hydromorphology has long been subjected to huge anthropogenic pressures with severe negative impacts on related ecosystems’ functioning and water quality. Therefore, improving river hydromorphological conditions represents a priority task in sustainable river management and requires proper assessment tools. It is well known that riparian vege...

The degradation of riparian ecosystems occurring throughout the past decades has motivated efforts aimed at the restoration of these ecosystems. The success of active revegetation approaches to restoration requires appropriate selection of reproductive material, which in turn requires knowledge of seed traits and germination. A. glutinosa (L.) Gaer...

The hybrids, the geography of nature and environment In the Anthropocene era, the transformation of material nature by societies is increasingly being assimilated. To describe this new situation, following the work of M. Serres and B. Latour, many studies suggest considering the contemporary nature as the result of hybridation of nature and culture...

The influence of site preparation on understorey plant diversity was assessed in the commercial floodplain forest in the Thaya River alluvium near Břeclav, Czech Republic. Phytosociological surveys were carried out during the summer of 2013 in 10-50 years old forest stands with and without mechanical site preparation (MSP). One hundred sixty relevé...

Many terrestrial ecosystems have undergone profound transformation under the pressure of multiple human stressors. This may have oriented altered ecosystems toward transient or new states. Understanding how these cumulative impacts influence ecosystem functions, services and ecological trajectories is therefore essential to defining effective resto...

Riparian vegetation is a central component of the hydrosystem. As such, it is often subject to management practices that aim to influence its ecological, hydraulic or hydrological functions. Remote sensing has the potential to improve knowledge and management of riparian vegetation by providing cost-effective and spatially continuous data over wide...

Given the vast amount of literature on the essential influence of riparian vegetation on observed river adjustments and trajectories, and the relative lack of consideration of riparian vegetation in the most frequently used hydromorphological protocols that consider riparian zones, we have two main objectives : - to review the hydromorphological co...

Fluvial riparian vegetation (RV) links fluvial and terrestrial ecosystems. It is under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities, and, therefore, the management and restoration of RV are increasingly important worldwide. RV has been investigated from different perspectives, so knowledge on its structure and function is widely distributed....

Fluvial riparian vegetation (RV) links fluvial and terrestrial ecosystems. It is under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities, and, therefore, the management and restoration of RV are increasingly important worldwide. RV has been investigated from different perspectives, so knowledge on its structure and function is widely distributed....

Dans le cadre du projet pilote de démantèlement des deux grands barrages de la Sélune, petit fleuve côtier qui se jette dans la baie du Mont-Saint-Michel, un programme scientifique de suivi à long terme de la renaturation du fleuve a été mis en place, coordonné par INRAE et l'Office français de la biodiversité. Dans cet article, les scientifiques s...

Les petites rivières de l’ouest de la France présentent la particularité d’être de faible énergie et sont considérées comme des paysages « ordinaires ». L’attention qui leur est portée est souvent modeste, malgré la forte patrimonialisation dont elles sont l’objet et les enjeux locaux qu’elles concentrent. Pourtant, les paysages de ces hydrosystème...

The rivers of the world are undergoing accelerated change in the Anthropocene, and need to be managed at much broader spatial and temporal scales than before. Fluvial remote sensing now offers a technical and methodological framework that can be deployed to monitor the processes at work and to assess the trajectories of rivers in the Anthropocene....

Decline of Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn caused by Phytophthora xalni is an emerging threat to riparian ecosystems, from northern to southern Europe. Reported intraspecific variation within this tree species suggests a variation in resistance in response to the pathogen. This work aimed at investigate the different response of A. glutinosa population...

Riparian forests are valuable environments delivering multiples ecological services. Because they face both natural and anthropo-genic constraints, riparian forests need to be accurately mapped in terms of genera/species diversity. Previous studies have shown that the Airborne Laser Scanner (ALS) data have the potential to classify trees in differe...

1) Evaluate the potential of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology for very high resolution monitoring vegetation dynamics; 2) Describe and explain the colonization pattern of dewatered alluvial deposits by vegetation during early successional stages at an intra‐annual scale. Sélune River, Normandy, France. We assessed vegetation cover using mod...

The restoration of ecological continuity along the Sélune River (Normandy, France) involves the removal of two tall hydroelectric dams (36 m removed in 2019 and 16 m in 2021), a project without precedent in Europe. During the pre‐removal phase (2014–2018), we performed scientific monitoring of the vegetation that was colonizing alluvium in the form...

Elaboré en étroite collaboration avec le Bureau du Comité Scientifique et Technique de la SHF qui propose les sujets, chaque dossier thématique est l'occasion de replacer un sujet dans son actualité. Une praticien.ne, endossant le rôle de rédacteur en chef, propose des contributions complémentaires issues de la communauté scientifique, technique, d...

Social‐ecological contexts are key to the success of ecological restoration projects. The ecological quality of restoration efforts, however, may not be fully evident to stakeholders, particularly if the desired aesthetic experience is not delivered. Aesthetically pleasing landscapes are more highly appreciated and tend to be better protected than...

Although wetlands remain threatened by human pressures and climate change, monitoring and managing them are challenging due to their high spatial and temporal dynamics within a fine-grained pattern. New satellite time-series at high temporal and spatial resolutions provide a promising opportunity to map and monitor wetlands. The objective of this s...

Riparian vegetation corresponds to all vegetation units along river networks, regardless of their physiognomy or origin, and is functionally related to other components of fluvial systems and the surrounding area. It belongs to the riparian zone, which is a landscape unit that is open (to fluxes to and from river systems and uplands) and co-constru...

Riparian zones experience many anthropic pressures and are the subject of European legislation to encourage their monitoring and management, to attenuate these pressures. Assessing the effectiveness of management practices requires producing indicators of ecological functions. Laser Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data can provide valuable informatio...

Approche critique de la cartographie de services écosystémiques. Quantifier et spatialiser les objets de nature : un enjeu toujours actuel. La carte, représentation partielle ou complète de la surface terrestre, sur un support plan, peut constituer un moyen de communication efficace. Elle peut, par exemple, faciliter le dialogue entre les chargés d...

Ecosystem Service (ES) mapping has become a key tool in scientific assessments of human-nature interactions and is being increasingly used in environmental planning and policy-making. However, the associated epistemic uncertainty underlying these maps often is not systematically considered. This paper proposes a basic procedure to present areas wit...

Riparian vegetation is a crucial component of fluvial systems and serves multiple socio-ecological functions. The objective of this review is to follow the scientific trajectory of studies of riparian vegetation throughout history and across regions and fields of knowledge. Such a synthesis is challenging because riparian vegetation is an open co-c...

In tropical forests farmers are among the most important agents of deforestation. At the interface between societies and their environment, ecosystem services (ES) is an integrated working framework through which natural and anthropogenic dimensions can be addressed. Here, we aimed to understand to what extent farmers impact ES availability. Based...

Mapping ecosystem services (ES) over large scales is important for environmental monitoring but is often prohibitively expensive and difficult. We test a hybrid, low-cost method of mapping ES indicators over large scales in Pará State, Brazil. Four ES indicators (vegetation carbon stocks, biodiversity index, soil chemical quality index and rates of...

Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services (ES) is seen as one way to improve decision making and land management to better integrate environmental issues. This study aimed to characterize ES supply in deforestation context where an improvement of scientific knowledge should help develop more efficient environmental management. For three case studi...

The recent decoupling of agricultural production and deforestation in the southern Amazon has been made possible thanks to (1) the adoption of intensive agricultural practices, including irrigation, and (2) the diversification of economic activities, including fish farming. Whereas this new agricultural model has brought out positive results to con...

Wetland area has decreased in most parts of the world and remains threatened by human pressures. However, wetland loss is difficult to accurately detect, delineate and quantify. While wetland distribution is influenced mainly by landform, LiDAR data provide accurate digital elevation models that can be used to delineate wetlands. Our objective was...

Over the last decade, dam and weir removal has been promoted to improve continuity along many river systems. However, such policies raise many socioecological issues such as social acceptability, integration of different river uses, and real impacts on river ecosystems. In this article, we illustrate how critical physical geography can help connect...

Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services (ES), their indicators and their relationships is of crucial importance for environmental management. In this article, we analyze the spatial distribution of multiple-ES indicators at three locations on the pioneer fronts of the Brazilian Amazon. We identify trade-offs and synergies between six ES indicato...

The wide use of the concept of « Ecosystem services (ES) » imposes a cautious work for delimiting its scope, particularly regarding its effects on nature’s management strategies. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the advantages and limits of the concept when used as framework for hydrosystem management. Within a Foucauldian theoretical framew...

The development of approaches to quantify and spatialize ecosystem services (ES) are greatly encouraged by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) and the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). Such approaches could allow the establishment of more appropriate and effective practices and policies for environmental mana...

Reflections about a critical physical geography The aim of this text is to introduce for a french-speaking audience the proposal of some north-american colleagues to renew biophysical approaches in geography. We present the origin and the nature of this critical physical geography which tend to explicitly integrate physical geography and human crit...

In the coming three years (2015-2018), two dams will be removed on the Selune River (Baie du Mont Saint Michel, France) in what appear as an unprecedented case of study in Europe for monitoring changes in terms of farming practices, ecological restoration and landscape organization. But to characterize future trajectories, we need to fully understa...

Along the Magra River (Central–Northern Italy), human control at the local-scale appears to be the main driving factor of morphological changes observed since WWII. Our results, based on aerial photographs analysis and field survey, indicate that the reduction in channel width observed between the 1950s and the 1980s is probably due to local factor...

As regards river restoration, it is fundamental to better link human pressures and environmental responses and to take into consideration not only target species or habitat but diverse ecological elements. This permits to assess sustainable restoration plan, especially concerning sediment augmentation below dams. The use of a hierarchical multicrit...

ABSTRACT. In West Africa, studies on fluvial systems dynamics are rare and mainly conducted at the small scale to highlight the role of the climatic changes as single driver. This study aims to analyse the recent fluvial system dynamics of the small catchment (4400km²) of the Yamé river (Pays Dogon, Mali). To characterize the current fluvial patter...