Forest temporal stability, a new tool to measure protected areas?

Abstract

Forests represent more than a third of France's territory, and one fourth of them are protected. Several types of protected areas exist in France to conserve these ecosystems. These protected areas have different organisations, with a governance scale ranging from local to international. However, there is no universal measure to estimate the long-term effect of protected areas on forest ecosystems. The present thesis attempts to establish the effect of protect areas on forest temporal stability during a period of 16 years over the mainland of France, using remote sensing data and the French national inventory. As a result, regional natural parks, Natura 2000 sites, and biosphere reserves influence positively the temporal stability of forests. Even though the superposition of protected areas can lead confusing results, the positive response of stability to different types of protected area suggest that it could be a suitable tool to be implemented in a broader assessment framework to evaluate protected areas outcomes.