Description

Twenty years of cooperation between INRA in Avignon , CERPAM, the Livestock Institute and the Luberon Regional Nature Park have produced numerous studies on the technical and organisational aspects of converting livestock systems and adapting them to the use of natural areas (grasslands, forest rangelands and Mediterranean forests). Faced with the scale of forthcoming changes in public policy, social mutations or climate change, the group wished to develop an approach and a tool to put accumulated data covering the entire Regional Park into perspective.

The INRA Ecodevelopment Unit therefore suggested implementing a companion modelling approach covering the long-term analysis of the ability of livestock farming to take part in projects for managing the region in terms of environmental issues and local development on a time scale of the next ten to fifteen years. The project aimed at co-constructing with partners in the field various scenarios depicting the changes in livestock activities and their interactions with landscape dynamics. The intention was to put together spatial representations of issues raised by each stakeholder concerned by the question and formalise various scenarios developed by the working group in its spatial dimensions.

The approach is in progress and is broken down into four phases:

1.  Integrating available scientific and technical knowledge on the dynamics of vegetation, forestry and livestock practices and the structure of agricultural farms by co-constructing a conceptual model representing the ins and outs of the question asked;
2.  Implementing the model with the Cormas platform in three contrasting geoterritories covering 22 municipalities in the Regional Park;
3.  Situated simulation exercises for the livestock farmers taking part in the area modelled, as part of a role-playing game;
4.  Improving the model using behaviours observed during the role-playing game sessions and simulating a few likely scenarios for transforming agriculture over the next fifteen years.

The first simulations showed the need to incorporate forestry activities as another decisive factor in the landscape dynamics and thus invite partners from the public (ONF) and private (CRPF) forest.