The longue durée evolution of the Seine basin is studied over 50–500 years.
Sedimentary archives [26] are used to reconstruct the records of dozens of metals
and persistent contaminants that were not adequately surveyed before the twentyfirst century. Their interpretation is aided by the historical research on archives for
past pressures, water quality analyses, and social responses dating back more than
150 years. The historical maps [48] enable a description of geomorphological
modifications in the river course since the eighteenth century, which can be very
slow (as with most natural processes) or stepwise (channelization, damming).
All these areas of research are presented here as belonging to the natural sciences
(e.g. hydrology, environmental chemistry, biogeochemistry, etc.), the social sciences
(history, geography, economics), or their combinations (agronomy, social experiments based on river models, scenarios of basin evolution, etc.). These distinctions
are now less and less marked, in particular with regard to the scenarios run with the
models and the analysis of socioecological trajectories.
The field, laboratory, and archive research activities are jointly analysed and
processed with many regulatory databases and geographic information system
(GIS) representations, thereby allowing a description of the entire basin and its
evolution. Many of these databases were not set up for environmental studies, but
for economic purposes, and, apart from the river discharge measurements, none of
them is generated with hydrological boundaries, but rather at administrative levels
[52, 53]. All are established at various space and time resolutions, from the dailysubdaily scale and 10 km
2 for the hydro-meteorological data (Fig. 10, database A) to
the yearly statistics of the national economy (database D). These databases are a
precious asset of the Seine River basin, with some of them starting at the beginning
of the nineteenth century.
Despite the diversity of the spatial and temporal scales shown here, the joint work
carried out over 30 years has one common goal: to show the evolution of the Seine
basin and its possible future, given the construction of the past trajectories and
possible future scenarios that are presented in the following chapters.
Acknowledgements This work is a contribution to the PIREN-Seine research programme (www.
piren-seine.fr), which belongs to the Zone Atelier Seine part of the international Long-Term SocioEconomic and Ecosystem Research (LTSER) network.
References
1. Crutzen PJ (2002) Geology of mankind. Nature 415:23. https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a
2. Crutzen PJ, Steffen W (2003) How long have we been in the Anthropocene era? An editorial
comment. Clim Chang 61:251–257. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004708.74871.62
3. Hamilton C, Gemenne F, Bonneuil C (eds) (2015) The Anthropocene and the global environmental crisis: rethinking modernity in a new epoch. Routledge, London
4. Latour B (2015) Face à Gaïa: Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique. La
Découverte, Paris
Trajectories of the Seine River Basin
23
Sedimentary archives [26] are used to reconstruct the records of dozens of metals
and persistent contaminants that were not adequately surveyed before the twentyfirst century. Their interpretation is aided by the historical research on archives for
past pressures, water quality analyses, and social responses dating back more than
150 years. The historical maps [48] enable a description of geomorphological
modifications in the river course since the eighteenth century, which can be very
slow (as with most natural processes) or stepwise (channelization, damming).
All these areas of research are presented here as belonging to the natural sciences
(e.g. hydrology, environmental chemistry, biogeochemistry, etc.), the social sciences
(history, geography, economics), or their combinations (agronomy, social experiments based on river models, scenarios of basin evolution, etc.). These distinctions
are now less and less marked, in particular with regard to the scenarios run with the
models and the analysis of socioecological trajectories.
The field, laboratory, and archive research activities are jointly analysed and
processed with many regulatory databases and geographic information system
(GIS) representations, thereby allowing a description of the entire basin and its
evolution. Many of these databases were not set up for environmental studies, but
for economic purposes, and, apart from the river discharge measurements, none of
them is generated with hydrological boundaries, but rather at administrative levels
[52, 53]. All are established at various space and time resolutions, from the dailysubdaily scale and 10 km
2 for the hydro-meteorological data (Fig. 10, database A) to
the yearly statistics of the national economy (database D). These databases are a
precious asset of the Seine River basin, with some of them starting at the beginning
of the nineteenth century.
Despite the diversity of the spatial and temporal scales shown here, the joint work
carried out over 30 years has one common goal: to show the evolution of the Seine
basin and its possible future, given the construction of the past trajectories and
possible future scenarios that are presented in the following chapters.
Acknowledgements This work is a contribution to the PIREN-Seine research programme (www.
piren-seine.fr), which belongs to the Zone Atelier Seine part of the international Long-Term SocioEconomic and Ecosystem Research (LTSER) network.
References
1. Crutzen PJ (2002) Geology of mankind. Nature 415:23. https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a
2. Crutzen PJ, Steffen W (2003) How long have we been in the Anthropocene era? An editorial
comment. Clim Chang 61:251–257. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004708.74871.62
3. Hamilton C, Gemenne F, Bonneuil C (eds) (2015) The Anthropocene and the global environmental crisis: rethinking modernity in a new epoch. Routledge, London
4. Latour B (2015) Face à Gaïa: Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique. La
Découverte, Paris
Trajectories of the Seine River Basin
23