Spontaneous landscape dynamics in the Pays de Bitche, Lorraine (France), during the Little Ice Age

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study is an analysis of a historical document (the ‘Atlas topographique du comté de Bitche’), dating from 1758 and carried out in north-eastern France. The Atlas is composed of three large volumes. The aim was to evaluate the timber resources that had accumulated during the 100 years of land abandonment following the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Before the seventeenth century, the main woodland management was a form of the selective cutting of over-mature trees. The authors of the Atlas focused on oak (without differentiating Quercus petraea from Q. robur) and beech (Fagus sylvatica) sexual regeneration, dead wood and the characteristics of woodlands. According to size, the woodlands (so-called ‘futaies’) were divided into five categories to which the authors associated arbitrary age ranges. Other information concerned climatic events (storms, frosts and drought), large illegal cuttings and new rules for land use. These descriptions were converted into semi-quantitative data by counting the number of mentions of the woodland categories. The main result was that futaies with large-sized trees, specifically oaks, were dominant. Tree-ring counting on twenty-four selected beech and oak trees indicate that there was no relationship between age and size. Another interesting result was that during the 100 years of non-use, oaks died massively probably following competition with beech, harsh climatic events typical of the Little Ice Age or insect attacks.