With the upcoming global warming forests are under threat. To forecast climate change impacts and adaptations, there is need for developing improved forest monitoring services, which are able to record, quantify and map bio-indicators of the forests’ health status across the globe. In this context, Earth observation (EO) can provide a substantial amount of up-to-date information about the biochemical and structural conditions of our forests at a local-to-global scale. Among the optical EO instruments in space, one of the most innovative instruments is the experimental Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) on board the PROBA-1 (Project for On Board Autonomy) satellite. CHRIS is capable of sampling reflected radiation at five viewing angles over the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) region of the solar spectrum with a relatively high spatial resolution (~17 m). The as such acquired spectrodirectional (combined multi-angular and spectroscopy) data may lead to new opportunities for space-based forest monitoring applications, yet the added value of canopy reflectance anisotropy measured over the whole VNIR spectral region is largely unknown. This is why the use of space-borne spectrodirectional data of a forested target has been investigated in this thesis.

With the upcoming global warming forests are under threat. To forecast climate change impacts and adaptations, there is need for developing improved forest monitoring services, which are able to record, quantify and map bio-indicators of the forests’ health status across the globe. In this context, Earth observation (EO) can provide a substantial amount of up-to-date information about the biochemical and structural conditions of our forests at a local-to-global scale. Among the optical EO instruments in space, one of the most innovative instruments is the experimental Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) on board the PROBA-1 (Project for On Board Autonomy) satellite. CHRIS is capable of sampling reflected radiation at five viewing angles over the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) region of the solar spectrum with a relatively high spatial resolution (~17 m). The as such acquired spectrodirectional (combined multi-angular and spectroscopy) data may lead to new opportunities for space-based forest monitoring applications, yet the added value of canopy reflectance anisotropy measured over the whole VNIR spectral region is largely unknown. This is why the use of space-borne spectrodirectional data of a forested target has been investigated in this thesis.

Viewing resource management essentially through a biophysical lens has provided too restricted a perspective for understanding complex political processes surrounding forest management. The case of community forestry in Nepal demonstrates a range of experiences of complex political processes, including conflicts and collaboration, especially between technical forest officials and local forest dependent people. Despite innovative legislative and institutional frameworks already in place, community forestry in Nepal still experiences the effects of techno-bureaucratic control. Such control is manifested in the entire range of processes related to planning, management, and monitoring of forestry activities. To understand this situation, we apply the conceptual lens of deliberative governance, that is, governance whose arrangements have been devised from both scientific and local knowledge. This chapter provides practical examples to offer insights into the application of deliberative governance in forestry practices. We identify how different aspects of managerialist, techno-bureaucratic domination (legitimated by principles of positivist science) are deliberatively challenged by local people, civil society activists, and action researchers to improve governance practices. We also identify situations and deliberative processes through which forest managers themselves begin to realize the limits of an antideliberative scientific approach, and apply more reflexive and deliberative approaches to knowledge and decision-making in forest management. In doing so, we eschew taking an absolute position for or against indigenous knowledge or scientific enterprise, but seek to demonstrate that neither technocratic prescription nor reliance on local knowledge alone is adequate for sustainable management of forests. What is needed, as Fischer (1998) argues, is a deliberative engagement between the claims to knowledge by both scientists and citizens. In our experience, this deliberative process provided a foundation for less constrained dialogue, greater collaboration, and mutual learning in the direction of more evidence-based decision-making. This approach is however not free from challenges related to power and techno-bureaucratic control.

Viewing resource management essentially through a biophysical lens has provided too restricted a perspective for understanding complex political processes surrounding forest management. The case of community forestry in Nepal demonstrates a range of experiences of complex political processes, including conflicts and collaboration, especially between technical forest officials and local forest dependent people. Despite innovative legislative and institutional frameworks already in place, community forestry in Nepal still experiences the effects of techno-bureaucratic control. Such control is manifested in the entire range of processes related to planning, management, and monitoring of forestry activities. To understand this situation, we apply the conceptual lens of deliberative governance, that is, governance whose arrangements have been devised from both scientific and local knowledge. This chapter provides practical examples to offer insights into the application of deliberative governance in forestry practices. We identify how different aspects of managerialist, techno-bureaucratic domination (legitimated by principles of positivist science) are deliberatively challenged by local people, civil society activists, and action researchers to improve governance practices. We also identify situations and deliberative processes through which forest managers themselves begin to realize the limits of an antideliberative scientific approach, and apply more reflexive and deliberative approaches to knowledge and decision-making in forest management. In doing so, we eschew taking an absolute position for or against indigenous knowledge or scientific enterprise, but seek to demonstrate that neither technocratic prescription nor reliance on local knowledge alone is adequate for sustainable management of forests. What is needed, as Fischer (1998) argues, is a deliberative engagement between the claims to knowledge by both scientists and citizens. In our experience, this deliberative process provided a foundation for less constrained dialogue, greater collaboration, and mutual learning in the direction of more evidence-based decision-making. This approach is however not free from challenges related to power and techno-bureaucratic control | Hemant R. Ojha et al., 'The Deliberative Scientist: Integrating Science and Politics in Forest Resource Governance in Nepal', Beyond the Biophysical, pp.167-191, Springer Netherlands, 2010

[Notes_IRSTEA]1 page de poster ; ce poster a aussi été présenté au colloque "8th International Symposium on Wild Boar and Other Suids, York, UK, 1-4 September 2010" : les auteurs sont les mêmes sauf pour Muriel Bec remplacée par Eric Baubet [Departement_IRSTEA]Territoires [TR1_IRSTEA]SEDYVIN | International audience | In this project, we will quantify the role of forest-dwelling ungulates as long-distance seed dispersers using a comparative approach of three different species: the red deer (Cervus elaphus) as a grazer species, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) as a browser species and the wild boar (Sus scrofa) as an omnivorous frugivorous species. These ungulates are widespread in France and especially in the Centre administrative region. We will adopt an integrative approach by monitoring the fate of seeds from the time they have been eaten or carried out by the animals to their release in the ecosystem.We will treat three main components of the dispersion i) the emigration phase (potential for epi- and endozoochory), ii) the transfer phase (seed retention time converted into a distance covered by wild animals using GPS locations) and iii) the immigration phase (studying ungulates' ability to modify seed germination rate). These 3 key phases will be put together to finally establish seed dispersion curves of a selected pool of forest plant species. This innovative project has the ambition to propose new research hypotheses on the spatial and genetic structuring of ungulate-disseminated plant populations.

[Notes_IRSTEA]1 page de poster ; ce poster a aussi été présenté au colloque "8th International Symposium on Wild Boar and Other Suids, York, UK, 1-4 September 2010" : les auteurs sont les mêmes sauf pour Muriel Bec remplacée par Eric Baubet [Departement_IRSTEA]Territoires [TR1_IRSTEA]SEDYVIN | International audience | In this project, we will quantify the role of forest-dwelling ungulates as long-distance seed dispersers using a comparative approach of three different species: the red deer (Cervus elaphus) as a grazer species, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) as a browser species and the wild boar (Sus scrofa) as an omnivorous frugivorous species. These ungulates are widespread in France and especially in the Centre administrative region. We will adopt an integrative approach by monitoring the fate of seeds from the time they have been eaten or carried out by the animals to their release in the ecosystem.We will treat three main components of the dispersion i) the emigration phase (potential for epi- and endozoochory), ii) the transfer phase (seed retention time converted into a distance covered by wild animals using GPS locations) and iii) the immigration phase (studying ungulates' ability to modify seed germination rate). These 3 key phases will be put together to finally establish seed dispersion curves of a selected pool of forest plant species. This innovative project has the ambition to propose new research hypotheses on the spatial and genetic structuring of ungulate-disseminated plant populations.