Visualization on the Web of 20 Years of Crop Rotation and Wildlife Co-Evolutions

Cyril Poitevin,Christine Plumejeaud-Perreau,Vincent Bretagnolle

doi:10.5194/ica-proc-1-93-2018

Abstract

Abstract. The accumulation of evidences of the effects of intensive agricultural practices against wildlife fauna and flora, and biodiversity in general, has been largely published in scientific papers (Tildman, 1999). However, data serving as sup-port to their conclusions are often kept hidden behind research institutions. This paper presents a data visualization sys-tem opened on the Web allowing citizens to get a comprehensive access to data issued from such kind of research institution, collected for more than 20 years. The Web Information System has been thought in order to ease the comparison of data issues from various databases describing the same object, the agricultural landscape, at different scales and through different observation devices. An interactive visualization is proposed in order to check co-evolution of fauna and flora together with agricultural practices. It mixes aerial orthoimagery produced since 1950 with vectorial data showing the evolutions of agricultural parcels with those of a few sentinel species such as the Montagu's harrier. This is made through a composition of maps, charts and time lines, and specific tools for comparison. A particular concern is given to the observation effort bias in order to show meaningful statistical aggregates.

Highlights

This research aims at identifying effective solutions for integrating agricultural development and conservation of biodiversity at the landscape scale
One of our hypotheses is that a free Web ac-cess to a set of interactive visualizations staging the collected data can give a comprehensive and direct overview of facts linked to the agricultural practices
A GIS on the Web for Environmental Data. This application aims to give an equal importance to aerial photographs and ground collected data, in order to ad-dress both the need for attractive data easier to understand for users like the aerial photographs, and the need for a deeper knowledge of the biodiversity evolution and crop evolution that can be explained by ground data

Summary

Introduction

This research aims at identifying effective solutions for integrating agricultural development and conservation of biodiversity at the landscape scale. Various environmental data have been collected with three main objectives. The third aim is directly targeted to stakeholders, through dissemination of research, citizen science as well as intervention research. In this latter category, we investigate how to sensitize local policy makers and citizens for a collective management of crop rotation that would maximize ecosystem services. One of our hypotheses is that a free Web ac-cess to a set of interactive visualizations staging the collected data can give a comprehensive and direct overview of facts linked to the agricultural practices. Our information system tries to address this challenge, and we detail in this contribution what kind of environmental data are analyzed and the Web design of this system. Those images give an astonishing view on the evolution of the area with the systematic extension of the area of agricultural parcels and the reduction of their number and their diversity (Fig. 1)

Description of the environmental data

A GIS on the Web for Environmental Data

Conclusion