Description

Interested in the companion modelling applied on the Causse Méjan ( Méjan case study ), the Société Civile des Terres du Larzac (SCTL) requested the INRA researchers in Avignon to use a similar approach in collective reflective thinking on how best to exploit the woods which have developed throughout its land over the last fifty years. The forest development plan should combine three objectives: control the current dynamics of pines, provide an income from pine timbering and oak coppicing, and improve pastoral production of wooded rangelands.

The approach was broken down into four phases:

1.  Mapping the management entities of all thirty farms in the SCTL, describing the grazing and work timetable and eliciting the activities taking part in the forest;
2.  Incorporating these data into an agent-based model developed by the researcher group then validating this model by the farmers and managers of the SCTL ;
3.  Simulating the probable dynamics of the area mapped if current practices are maintained over the next twenty years;
4.  Inventory of forest plots for each farmer and developing mobilisation scenarios for forest resources according to various options: taking farmer priorities only into account, promoting the most productive wood, and global reflective thinking about sustainable management of the entire forest massif.

The approach culminated in collective awareness of the many implications of pine encroachment on the SCTL land and developing long-term management scenarios for this spontaneous afforestation. The search for a compromise between the overall SCTL objectives deliberated at the forest massif scale and the individual objectives of farmers at the farm scale produced a wealth of debate and confrontations of viewpoints.

Following the support for this project, one farmer trained in identifying productive stands and in timber marking, a team of loggers was put together to carry out the forestry projects of volunteer farmers and several management operations are in progress.