Use of satellite data on a national scale to assess the place of grass in "cantonal landscapes" and the resulting environmental issues

Abstract

The human activities, and particularly agriculture, exert various pressures on the environment, that are difficult to approach on a synthetic view. The present work consists on linking two approaches, which make possible to locate and measure the respective importance of the various vegetation covers, especially grasslands, and to appreciate environmental stakes related to agriculture, on units going from the canton to the whole country. First, the construction of a typology at a cantonal scale, organized around the opposition grassland / crops and based on CORINE Land Cover data, gives a description of different " cantonal landscapes " characterized by the dominant categories of land cover. Then, as the environmental stakes related to the given land uses are known, it becomes possible, by crossing the data, to map the stakes and to quantify the surfaces on which they can appear.