A geochemical analysis of a well-dated 1.2 m-thick sedimentary sequence collected on the Rhinau island at ~60 km south of Strasbourg (France) has been performed in order to reconstruct the evolution of metal contents in overbank fine sediments of the Upper Rhine over the last 150 years. Data indicate that most of the geochemical variations in major elements as well as in trace elements along the sedimentary profile can be related to variations in the sediment mineralogical composition during deposition. Only Cu, Pb, Zn, and Sn highlight enrichment in the sediments, interpreted as resulting from human releases into the fluvial hydrosystem. Enrichment quantification is made by using diagrams of variation of element X normalized to silica as a function of Al2O3/SiO2. The results point out that each metal has its own enrichment pattern. The enrichment significances and origins are discussed by comparing them with the knowledge of historical contaminant release and/or deposition in the Upper Rhine hydrosystem. Sn enrichment is thus linked to Sn releases by textile industries downstream of Basel, whose activity peaked in ~1940/1950 CE before gradually declining. Pb enrichment, which started to decline in the mid-1980s and disappeared in the 2000s, is explained by the reduction and then cessation in the early 2000s of the two main sources of Pb pollution to the Rhine hydrosystem, namely (i) atmospheric fallout linked to the combustion of leaded gasoline and (ii) Pb flux associated to the Alsacian Potassium Mining rejects into the Rhine river. Cu and Zn enrichments are explained by diverse sources (e.g. agriculture, industries and wastewater treatment plants), whose emissions have reduced over the last decades but can still occur to a significant extent. Overall these results confirm potential and usefulness of our multi-method approach for assessing the effectiveness of public policies to reduce the impact of metal releases into continental hydrosystems, as well as their response time.

Summary Guidelines for managers of protected areas are an important component of conservation policies, on a par with large-scale frameworks and vehicles for conservation funding. In line with the recent literature proposing evaluations of conservation actions or political strategies to improve them, here we use an innovative, hybrid methodology, based both on an interpretative approach anchored in social sciences and a quantitative literature review, to identify available frameworks for evaluating conservation guidelines. The main result of this analysis is that the relevant literature in conservation is sparse and heterogeneous, but a relevant encompassing framework is provided by the literature in decision sciences based on the policy analytics framework. This evaluation framework consists of three criteria: scientific credibility, operationality and legitimacy. We then implement a pilot application by evaluating guidelines currently used in France to support all of the actors involved in protected areas management. The study concludes that these guidelines are plagued by significant weaknesses that could be overcome by implementing relevant participatory processes.

Abstract 137Cs is a long-lived man-made radionuclide introduced in the environment worldwide at the early beginning of the nuclear Era during atmospheric nuclear testing’s followed by the civil use of nuclear energy. Atmospheric fallout deposition of this major artificial radionuclide was reconstructed at the scale of French large river basins since 1945, and trajectories in French nuclearized rivers were established using sediment coring. Our results show that 137Cs contents in sediments of the studied rivers display a large spatial and temporal variability in response to the various anthropogenic pressures exerted on their catchment. The Loire, Rhone, and Rhine rivers were the most affected by atmospheric fallout from the global deposition from nuclear tests. Rhine and Rhone also received significant fallout from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and recorded significant 137Cs concentrations in their sediments over the 1970–1985 period due to the regulatory releases from the nuclear industries. The Meuse River was notably impacted in the early 1970s by industrial releases. In contrast, the Seine River display the lowest 137Cs concentrations regardless of the period. All the rivers responded similarly over time to atmospheric fallout on their catchment, underlying a rather homogeneous resilience capacity of these river systems to this source of contamination.

The precise dating of sedimentary archives covering the last 200 years in floodplains massively impacted by human activities is a major challenge. A combination of geochronological approaches is necessary to accurately date post-1800 sedimentary deposits. Here, we use a combination of a wide range of methods to unravel floodplain sedimentary dynamics, through the example of the Upper Rhine which is a highly regulated river. This comprises short--lived radionuclides (137Cs, 210Pbxs) and Infrared Stimulated Luminescence (IRSL) single-grain dating. Luminescence profiling methods (IRSL screening, portable luminescence reader) were also used to further characterise sedimentation dynamics. These were combined with a hydrogeomorphological approach based on historical planimetric and hydrological data, the knowledge of engineering works as well as the morpho-sedimentary adjustments they induced. Our study demonstrates the value of historic maps as well as historical hydrological data, which provide precise time markers for dating the sedimentary archive under study. We illustrate different assumptions, validity domains and limitations inherent to each method, especially the complexity of 137Cs to date floodplain sediments and the potential of luminescence methods for dating and estimating sedimentation continuity. We finally show the advantage of combining geochronological approaches in the construction of robust age models for young floodplain sedimentary archives in highly anthropized fluvial environments.

This contribution points out that while the importance of hydrologic, geomorphic, ecological, temporal, and socio-cultural connectivity in the functioning of hydrosystems has been acknowledged in three dimensions (longitudinal, lateral, and vertical), vertical connectivity has often been overlooked. Drawing on a multidisciplinary literature review, the authors aim to highlight the socio-cultural connectivity of subsurface flows and aquifers as a crucial factor for socio-hydrosystem understanding and management. The piece builds on emergent literature which underscores how groundwater, shallow groundwater, and the hyporheic zone are coproduced by nature and society through time. Furthermore, the review explores how verticality has become an important heuristic dimension at the intersection of the environmental and social sciences, and there has been a particular focus on the hyporheic zone to look at how notions of interstitiality and (in)visibility can be better integrated with socio-hydrosystem science and management. Finally, the paper calls for further research to integrate the vertical dimension of hydrosystems into more comprehensive socio-hydrological frameworks, which remain, at times, empirically and theoretically weak on questions of social power, even if they do incorporate aspects of political systems. Especially as societies' relationships to groundwater may be at the heart of climate change adaptation strategies, greater consideration of the social connectivity to subflows is a necessary direction for sustainable water resource management and scholarship. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water GovernanceScience of Water > Hydrological ProcessesScience of Water > Water and Environmental Change

Nowadays, environmental protection is a major issue at all scales. In France, as in many countries around the world, one of this field’s key strategy is the protection of natural areas through management and/or restoration measures. Numerous scientific and institutional actors are positioning themselves to propose frameworks to rationalize these management/restoration measures, but these approaches are very rarely the subject of critical scientific analysis. A methodological guide was recently developed to provide coherent guidance to all of those involved in the management of French Protected Natural Areas. We propose here the first scientific evaluation of this guide. It is based on the application of an evaluation framework made up of three criteria: scientific basis, operationality, and legitimacy. These criteria’s application allows us to highlight certain weaknesses within the guide, which are likely to have a negative impact on the quality of the activities led by the managers who use it. We show ways of improving the guide by deploying participatory approaches, which the guide mentions quickly when it should give them greater importance, by explaining the implementation methods and the necessary precautions to be taken in deploying them.

La qualité des eaux en France a fait l'objet d'une multitude de normes juridiques tant aux niveaux européen, international qu'aux niveaux national et régional. L'apport de notre contribution est l'étude des relations entre un espace transfrontalier, le Rhin supérieur, et l'application de normes juridiques de protection du milieu aquatique. A travers l'exemple de deux dispositifs, les cartes d'objectifs de qualité des eaux et les autorisations de rejets, nous montrons que le droit modifie l'espace de façon directe par la délimitation et la mention d'éléments géographiques directement dans les normes, ou indirecte par l'influence sur le comportement des acteurs. Les données proviennent de la collecte d'archives contenant des traces d'échanges écrites de l'administration mettant en œuvre les normes juridiques, et de ce fait nous nous intéressons aux dispositifs historiques. Notre contribution tend à mettre en évidence l'inscription de l'espace dans le droit, et à proposer un autre rapport au panorama de la politique de l'eau en replaçant les relations entre espaces et normes au cœur du questionnement.

Compte tenu des services écosystémiques qu’ils fournissent, les milieux fluviaux occupent une place privilégiée dans les stratégies de protection de l’environnement, ce qui conduit fréquemment à la mise en place de mesures spécifiques de gestion et de restauration. La participation joue un rôle croissant dans la définition et la mise en œuvre de telles mesures, au point d’être considérée comme une norme politique. Pour garantir que la participation contribue effectivement à améliorer les actions de gestion et de restauration, nous proposons un type particulier de participation : la participation contre-argumentative. Cet article présente les résultats de l'application de celle-ci dans le cadre d’une collaboration avec le gestionnaire dans la Réserve Naturelle Nationale du Delta de la Sauer. À partir de cette application, et d’une esquisse de comparaison avec un processus participatif réalisé auparavant dans la même réserve, nous présentons les leçons qui peuvent en être tirées. Ces conclusions peuvent être transposées dans d'autres contextes de gestion et de restauration de milieux fluviaux, et plus généralement dans d’autres espaces naturels protégés.

Odonyms, or street names, have a significant linguistic complexity in France. They usually have at least two parts, one "generic" (street, place, avenue…) with a general scope and the other, "specific", which associates a name to the first. Decomposed in such a way, odonyms carry the traces of an underlying geography whose structure remains to be studied. In France, there are approximately 28.5 million geolocalized addresses in 2018, listed in the National Addresses Database (BAN). From these addresses, we have extracted the 2.33 million odonyms in the municipalities of France. An innovative methodology using Natural Language Processing paired with a custom-built ontology of the 448 generics allowed us to perform a Part-of-Speech labelling and splitting of the odonyms into its constituants stored into a coherent and homogeneous geolocalized database. A cartographic study of the distribution of generics in the French space at departemental level was then carried out. Against all expectations, their distribution turns out to be non-homogeneous in the French space, even for some very common names such as "rue".

Assessing the effects of remediation measures to minimize impacts of human activities on the environment currently represents a major challenge for environmental scientists and policy-makers. Evaluating the effectiveness of measures undertaken in hydrosystems over the last decades to improve the chemical quality of river sediments is thus crucial. This, in turn, may strongly favour future efforts for ecological river restoration. Against this background, geochemical surveys are often based on a monitoring of the quality of both water and suspended matter at local measurement stations. However, similar approaches use dated sedimentary records, thereby offering the twofold advantage of (i) extending the temporal framework to past activities and (ii) considering several geomorphological units along and across the hydrosystem. This study focuses on a ~100 km long reach of the Upper Rhine hydrosystem, from Neuf-Brisach to Strasbourg (France). It aims at mapping the anthropogenic geochemical contamination recorded in fine sediments which deposited in response to several river engineering works. Fluvial deposition has varied both longitudinally in response to longitudinal adjustments and laterally because of the microtopography and historical infrastructures such as dikes. We thus first carried out an unprecedented hydromorphological reconstruction based on a planform study using ancient maps combined with information about the vertical evolution of the hydrosystem (flood record

Odonyms, or street names, have a significant linguistic complexity in France. They usually have at least two parts, one "generic" (street, place, avenue.) with a general scope and the other, "specific", which associates a name to the first. Decomposed in such a way, odonyms carry the traces of an underlying geography whose structure remains to be studied. In France, there are approximately 28.5 million geolocalized addresses in 2018, listed in the National Addresses Database (BAN). From these addresses, we have extracted the 2.33 million odonyms in the municipalities of France. An innovative methodology using Natural Language Processing paired with a custom-built ontology of the 448 generics allowed us to perform a Part-of-Speech labelling and splitting of the odonyms into its constituants stored into a coherent and homogeneous geolocalized database. A cartographic study of the distribution of generics in the French space at departemental level was then carried out. Against all expectations, their distribution turns out to be non-homogeneous in the French space, even for some very common names such as "rue".

In this paper, we propose a model and a methodology for the analysis of urban fabrics, sets of built morphological units articulated together by urban networks. The core of the paper presents the MoGUS model (Model Generator & analyser for Urban Simulation) and its formalization. This model jointly represents the buildings and the viaires networks of a city in a graph, and allows a comparative analysis of the properties of different urban fabrics, using derived indicators. A study plan applied to four types of archetypal urban fabrics (Hippodamean, medieval, radio-concentric, Haussmannic) generated with the MoGUS tool is presented to illustrate the possibilities of the model.

Les pollutions chroniques et accidentelles des eaux du Rhin les plus importantes sont survenues avec l’avènement des industries chimiques et lourdes. Dès lors, une multitude de textes juridiques (conventions internationales, directives de l’Union européenne, lois, décrets) a été élaborée afin de lutter contre la pollution industrielle. Les intentions de cette contribution sont d’apporter des pistes méthodologiques à l’aide d’outils numériques d’une part, pour la reconstruction partielle de la géohistoire des rejets d’effluents industriels ; d’autre part, pour l’évaluation de l’effectivité du droit dans le temps. L’objectif est de comprendre les liens entre cadre normatif et rejets d’effluents industriels et son impact sur le Rhin. Nous avons choisi un site d’étude précis : le Grand Canal d’Alsace et le Vieux Rhin afin d’évaluer l’intérêt de la cartographie juridique dans l’étude des pollutions industrielles. S’agissant d’un projet encore exploratoire, nous exposons ici uniquement la démarche adoptée sur la rive gauche française du Rhin.

Dans cet article, les auteurs proposent un modèle et une méthodologie d’analyse des trames urbaines, en tant qu’ensembles d’unités morphologiques bâties articulées entre elles par les réseaux urbains. Le coeur de l’article présente le modèle MoGUS (Model Generator and analyser for Urban Simulation) et sa formalisation. Ce modèle représente conjointement les immeubles et les réseaux viaires d’une ville sous forme de graphe, et permet une analyse comparative des propriétés de trames urbaines différentes à l’aide d’indices dérivés. Un plan d’étude, appliqué à quatre types de trames urbaines archétypales (hippodaméenne, médiévale, radio-concentrique, haussmannienne) générées avec l’outil MoGUS, est présenté à titre d’illustration des possibilités du modèle.