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Key wordsRegional nature parks, Occitania, Living Lab, grasslands, forage resources, snow cover, lagoon, consultation

ADOPT: at the heart of regional nature parks

Published on 30/06/2022
In the context of climate change, regional nature parks are playing a more crucial role than ever for France's natural heritage and regional planning. In a Living Lab approach, the ADOPT project is dedicated exclusively to meeting their needs through Earth observation. And to follow the project as closely as possible, the team is launching its Newsletter.
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Cinereous Fritillary or Coccigrole
Cinereous Fritillary or Coccigrole © Marc Esslinger PNR Causses du Quercy

At the beginning of March 2022, we welcomed the launch of the ADOPT project, which began a series of consultations to define the priorities and needs of regional nature parks (RNPs), which the project team shared in the form of videos (in French).
Four months later, half of the workstreams have been completed, bringing the project stakeholders to a pivotal moment. The selection of the first indicators is planned for the beginning of summer 2022, for a production launch during the summer in order to carry out user tests in the autumn.

A Living Lab approach

Formalised by E2L, the Living Lab approach comprises four loops. Each one is an iterative process that progresses through numerous meetings, sometimes with all the stakeholders, sometimes with each of the three pilot parks. In between these meetings, back office work prepares the geospatial datasets that serve as a basis for discussion at the following meetings.

Loop 0, completed

Objectives => results:

  • Specify an organisation => clarification of objectives, work plan, choice of 3 pilot NRPs
  • Identify key issues => choose 3 priority issues of interest: 
    • Fodder resources (meadows, dry grasslands and woodland meadows), a theme supported by the PNR Causses du Quercy
    • The snow cover and its link to water resources, a theme supported by the Catalan Pyrenees NRP;
    • The lagoon edge environments, a theme dealt with by the Narbonnaise en Méditerranée NRP.

Loop 1, completed

Objectives => results:

  • Inventing indicator tracks based on the parks' issues => Information layers have been gathered within a QGIS (Geographic Information System) project by Pilot NRP, targeting the themes of interest;
  • Create a shared knowledge base on issues, themes and tools => 15 NRP agents were trained in 3 sessions in remote sensing and satellite data processing. The pilot NRP's have started to provide data to feed the open source GIS QGIS.

Loop 2, planned for the second half of 2022

Objective: To deepen the use of remote sensing data in real life situations and to identify possible indicators

Loop 3, planned for 2023

Objective: Move to a "Pilot" service (real scale, real conditions of use and realization of the service)

Outlook: focus on fodder resources

The team seeks to identify indicators that are useful for monitoring long-term changes but also have more immediate operational use. Indicators of phenology and productivity of grasslands and other grassy areas are a good example, as they allow :

  • monitoring of agri-environmental and climatic measures, such as delayed mowing;
  • a near-real-time assessment of the state of the grasslands, useful for example in choosing grazing areas;
  • long-term documentation of changes in response to changing climate and practices.
ADOPT indices mdvi et aérien

On the right, NDVI vegetation index from Sentinel-2 cumulated from March to July 2021 and red overlay of grassland plots subject to a late mowing contract as of 20 June. On the left, IGN aerial photograph of the same area.

Subscribe to the ADOPT newsletter!

To support the community approach implemented, the project team now proposes the ADOPT newsletter. Setting up a common working framework, the inter-park dynamics, the approach to remote sensing and the first lessons learned, it's all there!