Urban dynamics simulation and climatic change scenarios for 2050 in order to identify areas of biodiversity's conservation in the French's Maritime Alps

Abstract : The growth of the population's centers and cities has been considered as the first element of change in the terrestrial planetary ecosystems. The change of ecosystems functioning generated by landscape fragmentation is currently the principal risk for the biodiversity conservation. According to the IPCC scenarios, it's possible that climatic change will have a harder effect in fragmented areas in comparison with less or not fragmented areas. The purpose of this study is to provide a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) in order to evaluate the consequences of urbanization and climatic change effects in France (French Riviera) on biodiversity. The process of evaluation consists of identifying the possible dynamics of urbanization using cellular automata model for simulation (SpaCelle) and multi agents systems (NetLogo) according to spatial process on the considered territory. This evaluation is performed using a set of spatial data to understand historic patron or growth and transition spatial rules in order to project the future scenarios of landscape changes. The second step is the characterization of the relationship between climate and ecosystems according to the current climate, which is the first element to calibrate the climatic change model. This process is performed using the botanical database "Sophy". With the identification of the climatic changes using the reference scenarios provided by the IPCC, a projection of the potential changes in the ecosystems 2050 is realized. Finally, with the information provided by the scenario of possible urbanization and of the potential evolution of ecosystems, the SDSS will give a vision of the sensitive areas and territorial conflicts. The results of this research will show a possibility to provide a systematic method to make decisions with a better certainty and coherence to establish areas of biodiversity conservation.