L’analyse des aires de faulde permet de reconstituer l’histoire du charbonnage en forêt et ses conséquences sur les écosystèmes à différentes échelles spatiales. L’obtention de données chronomogiques reste une étape clé, qui nécessite le recours à des marqueurs, comme le radiocarbone et la technique, plus récente, de luminescence optiquement stimulée.

Lynchets are ridges formed by erosion and sediment accumulation downstream of agricultural plots and offer valuable insights into past agricultural activity. These microtopographies cover vast areas and serve as indicators of historical changes in land use. As a result, their ubiquity across Europe makes them particularly interesting. In this study, we propose a geoarchaeological approach to analyze six lynchets, four in the Vosges Mountains and two on the Lorraine Plateau (France). The lynchets can be considered soil archives with no stratigraphic organization or chronological sequence from bottom to top, making it difficult to determine the age of the lynchets and identify changes in land use over time. To this end, we propose the analysis of historical and geo-historical archives combined with the "pedosedimentary" archives of lynchets through charcoal identification and dating combined with near-infrared spectroscopy to determine the age, vegetation, and past land use changes associated with lynchet landscapes. By combining these multiple data sources, we are better able to show the chronological development of these ancient agricultural systems and uncover valuable information on landscape history. Charcoal dating suggests a higher frequency of fires from the Middle Ages. The dating aligns with the regional dynamics of anthropogenic fires, indicating a potential use of fire for cultural purposes. We also demonstrate the difficulty of extrapolating the dating of a lynchet to the entire lynchet system. Our results highlight the difficulties of interpreting the formation and dating of lynchets and the lynchet system on the sole basis of charcoal analysis. However, we highlight the value of applying pedoanthracology to lynchets to determine the dynamics of land use change in former fields.

Background The global human footprint has fundamentally altered wildfire regimes, creating serious consequences for human health, biodiversity, and climate. However, it remains difficult to project how long-term interactions among land use, management, and climate change will affect fire behavior, representing a key knowledge gap for sustainable management. We used expert assessment to combine opinions about past and future fire regimes from 99 wildfire researchers. We asked for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the frequency, type, and implications of fire regime change from the beginning of the Holocene through the year 2300. Results Respondents indicated some direct human influence on wildfire since at least ~ 12,000 years BP, though natural climate variability remained the dominant driver of fire regime change until around 5,000 years BP, for most study regions. Responses suggested a ten-fold increase in the frequency of fire regime change during the last 250 years compared with the rest of the Holocene, corresponding first with the intensification and extensification of land use and later with anthropogenic climate change. Looking to the future, fire regimes were predicted to intensify, with increases in frequency, severity, and size in all biomes except grassland ecosystems. Fire regimes showed different climate sensitivities across biomes, but the likelihood of fire regime change increased with higher warming scenarios for all biomes. Biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services were predicted to decrease for most biomes under higher emission scenarios. We present recommendations for adaptation and mitigation under emerging fire regimes, while recognizing that management options are constrained under higher emission scenarios. Conclusion The influence of humans on wildfire regimes has increased over the last two centuries. The perspective gained from past fires should be considered in land and fire management strategies, but novel fire behavior is likely given the unprecedented human disruption of plant communities, climate, and other factors. Future fire regimes are likely to degrade key ecosystem services, unless climate change is aggressively mitigated. Expert assessment complements empirical data and modeling, providing a broader perspective of fire science to inform decision making and future research priorities.

Les archives du sol sont des enregistrements locaux mais continus de l’histoire d’un site. Elles incluent des éléments biologiques, physico-chimique et anthropiques. Leur interprétation est délicate mais cruciale en écologie historique, car elles permettent de révéler les différentes facettes d’une longue histoire environnementale qui impacte toujours les écosystèmes actuels, même si elles tendent à s’effacer progressivement.

Fagus sylvatica L. is among the most competitive trees in European temperate deciduous forests on well-drained but not too dry soils and is known to be a major species in the mature stages of natural succession over large areas. However, even under favourable conditions, it is often sporadic or even absent from present-day stands whereas Quercus spp. are dominant. Based on written sources, the predominance of Quercus spp. has been identified as a potential heritage of historical management. To test the hypothesis that past human practices caused the replacement of Fagus by Quercus spp. on well-drained soils, we carried out a soil charcoal analysis on current mature Quercus spp. stands in 19 forest sites of the Lorraine Plateau in northeastern France. ‘Mega-charcoal’ assemblages were extracted from soil trenches and taxonomically identified. Our results, based on more than 5600 charcoal pieces, identified 19 taxa and showed the presence of Quercus and Fagus in all sites. Quercus was dominant, followed by Carpinus and Fagus, as it is today in the on-site forests, except for Fagus, which is not observed in any of the studied stands. Other taxa, such as Prunus, Populus, Betula, were present at lower abundances, occurring in only a few sampling sites. The 71 radiocarbon dates indicated that i) a Fagus forest had been in place during the Bronze Age, without any dated oak pieces found; ii) Quercus became common from the end of the Bronze Age, iii) and was mixed with Fagus from the middle of the Iron Age. These results provide a new evidence that historical forest management in western Europe caused the replacement of Fagus by Quercus, and therefore the manipulation of forest stand species composition started during the Bronze Age.

This multidisciplinary study aims to decipher the impact of ancient charcoal production on past and present-day soils in the northern Vosges Mountains. Soil observations in the field and laboratory were complemented by charcoal and phytolith studies on large thin sections, molecular analyses of organic pollutants, and phytolith analysis on bulk samples. The complex technosol platform records an ancient natural soil sequence buried by a human-made platform on which charcoal accumulated. The current upslope soil is an entic Podzol. Palaeoecological data collected in the buried soil are reliable owing to low bioactivity due to soil acidity. Podzolisation predated the platform construction. The presence of ashes induced low soil alkalisation developed in the charcoal hearth remains and appears to have generated the migration of subsequent iron/clay/organic bands throughout the platform sediment and the buried soil. Charcoal studied in thin sections revealed mainly Quercus and Fagus taxa. Phytolith studies suggest that a less dense or degraded forest preceded platform construction, probably due to former woodland coppicing or earlier disorganised wood gathering. The specific distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons sorbed on charcoal has persisted in soils throughout centuries, but we have no evidence that charcoal-making activities contributed to diffuse global pollution.

This article examines the role of digital twins in advancing regeneration processes within the circular economy. We focus on the capabilities of digital twins to model product life cycles and improve sustainability by supporting regeneration strategies. Our results show that digital twins facilitate accurate simulation and prediction of product lifecycle phases, which is essential for decision-making. Notably, real-world implementation of digital twins has improved resource management and operational efficiency, proving that they can transform sustainability practices in manufacturing industries. This study highlights not only the operational benefits of digital twins, but also their strategic role in promoting environmental sustainability through improved resource efficiency. In addition, it identifies opportunities and challenges, which provides a model for using digital twins to obtain environmental and economic results in the manufacturing industry.

Northern peatlands store globally-important amounts of carbon in the form of partly decomposed plant detritus. Drying associated with climate and land-use change may lead to increased fire frequency and severity in peatlands and the rapid loss of carbon to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the patterns and drivers of peatland burning on an appropriate decadal to millennial timescale relies heavily on individual site-based reconstructions. For the first time, we synthesise peatland macrocharcoal re-cords from across North America, Europe, and Patagonia to reveal regional variation in peatland burning during the Holocene. We used an existing database of proximal sedimentary charcoal to represent regional burning trends in the wider landscape for each region. Long-term trends in peatland burning appear to be largely climate driven, with human activities likely having an increasing influence in the late Holocene. Warmer conditions during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (similar to 9e6 cal. ka BP) were associated with greater peatland burning in North America's Atlantic coast, southern Scandinavia and the Baltics, and Patagonia. Since the Little Ice Age, peatland burning has declined across North America and in some areas of Europe. This decline is mirrored by a decrease in wider landscape burning in some, but not all sub-regions, linked to fire-suppression policies, and landscape fragmentation caused by agricultural expansion. Peatlands demonstrate lower susceptibility to burning than the wider landscape in several instances, probably because of autogenic processes that maintain high levels of near-surface wetness even during drought. Nonetheless, widespread drying and degradation of peatlands, particularly in Europe, has likely increased their vulnerability to burning in recent centuries. Consequently, peatland restoration efforts are important to mitigate the risk of peatland fire under a changing climate. Finally, we make recommendations for future research to improve our understanding of the controls on peatland fires.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Wood and charcoal were key sources of energy during early industrialization in Europe (18th century), preceding the large-scale exploitation of fossil coal. Past timber harvesting implied land transformation and woodland resources management. Therefore, relict charcoal kilns and historical documents of forest management are important sources of information about past woodland composition and structure. However, ancient charcoal kilns are poorly documented in temperate woodlands in the lowlands of western Europe, especially combined with historical written sources. In this study, charcoal production was investigated in an area in NE France, by combining charcoal and historical sources analysis, along with innovative dating methodologies. Thus, by using both radiocarbon and optically-stimulated luminescence dating, we showed that the activity lasted until recent times (19th–early 20th centuries) and Carpinus was the dominant taxon in charcoal assemblage. Moreover, kiln attributes seemed to be independent of topographical variables. Woodlands in this area were subject to a coppice-with-standards management, where small diameter wood was preferred to produce charcoal and large diameter stems, mainly Quercus and Fagus, were traded as timber. The dominance of Carpinus is rather uncommon in charcoal studies but supports the importance of Carpinus as fuelwood since the Middle Ages, as confirmed by many written sources.

The SolHoM(a) project aims at determining the degree of landscape anthropisation in the Fossard massif (Remiremont, Vosges, France) by estimating the impact of past human occupations on current soils. Nowadays, a forest covers this relatively inhospitable mountain (hard climate, steep slopes, acid soils ...), but some remains suggest human presence for at least 1400 years. The Saint-Mont is a variscan orogenic granitic summit (height 672m) with valuable preserved archaeological relics, located south of the Fossard. At the top was founded the monasterium Habendum (from the 7th century to the French Revolution), which potentially comes after a late-antic castrum. Furthermore, monumental enclosure dry-stones walls, not yet clearly linked with the monastery, crosses the massif. Our methodology is first experienced on the Saint-Mont, well documented by recent archaeological research. It features: - sampling soil transects presenting a clear gradient from highly to poorly human impacted areas. According to those transects, soils are sampled and characterised (physico-chemistry, soil micromorphology, analysis of organic matter, dating); this should highlight traces of past human activity; - a development of algorithms to detect geometric structures in the raw LiDAR data provided by the PCR AGER(b) (Ch. Kraemer, dir). This research might help archaeologists to determine areas influenced or not by men. Once tested on the Saint-Mont, this approach will be applied to another archaeologically less investigated area of the Fossard. First field works highlight two soil sequences: - the first one, near a probable merovingian wall close to the monastery, reveals a very black 80cm deep unit, - the second one, far-off the monastery and beside the enclosure dry-stone wall, is less thick but have a thin black unit buried under 20 cm of pedogenised sediment. Physico-chemical and soil micromorphological analyses are in progress. The coming study of profiles/sequences more distant from archaeological sites will contribute to estimate the degree of soils anthropisation in the Saint-Mont. (a) Interactions Sol-Hommes-Milieux (b) ArcheoGEographie du premier Remiremont et de ses abords

Historical charcoal production is one of the significant factors affecting today’s forest dynamics. A key challenge is to develop tools to investigate historical charcoal production over large areas, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of past impacts and history of charcoal production over a given landscape. In this study, high-resolution remote-sensing airborne LiDAR images over a large woodland area were used to compare manual on-screen versus algorithm-based automatic methods to inventory charcoal kilns with inputs of field-validated data. The results revealed that (1) the on-screen detection method provided less false-positives, (2) the automatic method detects a higher number of kilns and (3) kiln distribution seemed to be connected mostly to land ownership rather than to environmental variables. This study validates a new method of charcoal kilns’ inventory and spatial analysis that can be applied to other areas to better understand the effect of past biomass harvesting for charcoal production on forest dynamics.

Several reports indicate that it is now necessary to modify our consumption patterns (food and manufacturing products, energy, etc.) and production to reduce our negative impacts on the planet. Companies have already evolved with sometimes varied motivations (strategy of greening their image, compliance with regulations or opportunity for innovation) but to support these developments one of the main axes to achieve this objective is education and training. Acting on business strategies and more practically from product design by making engineers take the notion of sustainability into account in their decisions is a crucial issue. To do this, they must master the knowledge and skills to modify and reduce our impact on the environment and have a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of our society. Such a context obliges to integrate non-technical competencies in curricula and a disciplinary trainings. In this paper, we present a competency-based model to support university and teams of teachers in creating such curricula and courses. We provide some guidelines and examples of activities to help teachers to identify which type of skill mix is addressed at different levels of acquisition.