LandMod2010: researchers join forces for better modelling!

25/01/2010 - Press release

From 3 to 5 February, the Montpellier SupAgro campus will be hosting an international conference on integrated landscape modelling, LandMod2010. World experts in ecosystem modelling and simulation will be meeting in Languedoc-Roussillon for the first time.

Landscapes are the fruit of a range of complex interactions between a physical environment (topography, geology, climate), the living organisms in it (fauna, flora, microorganisms) and the human activities that serve to modify and shape those two components.
Moreover, landscapes and the ecosystems–both natural and manmade–that they include provide the local population with a range of "environmental services": agricultural, drinking water, biodiversity reserve, aesthetic advantages, etc. These environmental services lie at the very heart of sustainable development issues.

Modelling, which has long been used by scientists, uses mathematical and computer tools, in constant interaction with experiments, to assess the complex reality of landscapes and make that reality intelligible.
Within a given discipline, each landscape component (for instance the soil, forest cover, farms, etc) can be modelled so as to understand how it functions, or to predict its reaction to a range of scenarios.

However, landscape components are not independent of one another, and indeed interact constantly. The main task is therefore to coordinate and integrate the various disciplines in order to fine-tune our understanding of how landscapes function. At the same time, integrating increasingly complex models poses new challenges from a mathematical and informatics point of view.

The state of the art in terms of landscape modelling

Taking up the challenges of integration, from both a disciplinary and a methodological point of view, is the objective set for LANDMOD2010.

On the initiative of researchers from INRA and CIRAD in Montpellier and with financial support from the Fondation Agropolis, the three-day conference in Montpellier is due to be attended by a hundred or so people, including numerous international socio-environmental modelling experts.

The meeting is the culmination of a move over the past year by a network of scientists based in Montpellier to ensure greater interdisciplinarity in their research projects. It should enable an assessment not only of the state of the art in terms of global research on integrated landscape modelling, but of the main issues to be tackled in future.

The threats to the current global ecological balance are huge. It is becoming essential to have reliable tools capable of analysing the consequences of human behaviour for the environment and the services it provides. The fruits of this research will naturally serve to feed the new Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, cf. the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Category: Coming up