Preface
Among the six hydrographic basins of metropolitan France, the Seine-Normandy
basin is the most human-impacted. This territory of 76,000 km
2 and 17 million
people receives the highest anthropogenic pressure, due to its industrial and agricultural activities linked to the development of the urban area of Paris, which has
been and still is the economic and social heart of France. These pressures have
gradually impacted the hydrological, chemical, and ecological functioning of the
basin, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the
1990s.
The very poor chemical and ecological status of water bodies in the 1980s led a
small group of researchers to propose a PIREN-Seine, i.e. an interdisciplinary
environmental research program created by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). This program was launched in 1989 in the context of
insufficient wastewater treatment in the Paris conurbation. Its first achievement
consisted in developing models to better understand the river hydrological and
biogeochemical functioning. These tools have made it possible to bring together
research teams on a common object of study, the whole Seine watershed; the
program has also been a forum for dialogue between the basin’s institutional
partners and researchers, enabling the latter to make management proposals to
establish investment priorities based on the results of these models.
Over the past 30 years, the PIREN-Seine program has grown up, has attracted
social scientists, and has generated a vast number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary publications, more than 100 PhD theses, hundreds of publications in
scientific journals, and as many communications in international workshops and
conferences. Nevertheless, the collective visibility of this group of scientists and
institutional partners is still relatively low internationally, since most publication
credits are given to individuals, to their laboratories, or to their research institutions.
Moreover, the names of these laboratories and institutions have also evolved over
ix
Among the six hydrographic basins of metropolitan France, the Seine-Normandy
basin is the most human-impacted. This territory of 76,000 km
2 and 17 million
people receives the highest anthropogenic pressure, due to its industrial and agricultural activities linked to the development of the urban area of Paris, which has
been and still is the economic and social heart of France. These pressures have
gradually impacted the hydrological, chemical, and ecological functioning of the
basin, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the
1990s.
The very poor chemical and ecological status of water bodies in the 1980s led a
small group of researchers to propose a PIREN-Seine, i.e. an interdisciplinary
environmental research program created by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). This program was launched in 1989 in the context of
insufficient wastewater treatment in the Paris conurbation. Its first achievement
consisted in developing models to better understand the river hydrological and
biogeochemical functioning. These tools have made it possible to bring together
research teams on a common object of study, the whole Seine watershed; the
program has also been a forum for dialogue between the basin’s institutional
partners and researchers, enabling the latter to make management proposals to
establish investment priorities based on the results of these models.
Over the past 30 years, the PIREN-Seine program has grown up, has attracted
social scientists, and has generated a vast number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary publications, more than 100 PhD theses, hundreds of publications in
scientific journals, and as many communications in international workshops and
conferences. Nevertheless, the collective visibility of this group of scientists and
institutional partners is still relatively low internationally, since most publication
credits are given to individuals, to their laboratories, or to their research institutions.
Moreover, the names of these laboratories and institutions have also evolved over
ix