2020-2024 Project of the Loire Workshop Site (ZAL)

The ZAL goals for the 2020-2024 project follow on from the previous one, but focus more particularly on multidisciplinary research questions:  

Goal 1: Improve and expand the scope for collaborative research within the ZAL area  

• Develop a collective socio-ecological research programme over the long-term, grounded in 3 thematic groups.
• Strengthen ties with the academic networks (OSU, MSH, MIDI, Ipat, etc.).

Goal 2: Develop understanding at various geographic and temporal scales across the Loire catchment area.  

• Organise research in keeping with the key layout plan defined at the level of the Workshop Site Network (RZA).
• Set up structured site networks through three platforms ("Major Watercourses", "Basin Heads" and "Urban Environments") across the whole of the Loire’s catchment area and continue developing the biodiversity observation network for the Loire and its tributaries (OBLA).

With that in mind, the network members will endeavour to discuss and work on the following questions:  

• How are global changes (climate change, increasing urbanisation, intensive farming, pollution, invasive exotic species, etc.) affecting the socio-ecosystems of the Loire catchment area?

• How are human societies interacting with the functioning of ecosystems? What are the interactions between human activities (uses, pollution, etc.), biological characteristics and different types of transfer in the Loire’s socio-ecosystems? What are the past trajectories of the Loire’s socio-ecosystems and what possible trajectories are there depending on changes in the societal and biophysical context?

http://www.za-loire.org    

How does this all tie in with the Loire Valley World Heritage inscription?

Among the criteria that determined the Loire’s Valley’s inclusion on the World Heritage List, criterion (ii) states that "The Loire Valley is an outstanding cultural landscape along a major river. It bears witness to an interchange of human values and to a harmonious development of interactions between humankind and their environment over two millennia."