Describing vegetation at the landscape level: “PAYSAGE”, a database designed for series and geoseries datasets

Abstract

The CarHAB project, funded by the French Ministry of Environment, was set up to map the vegetation all over the French territory. In this objective, both analytical (plot) releves and synreleves were carried out. Based on the case study of low mountain habitats in the “chaine des Puys” (Massif central, France), this paper presents i) the methodology developed to carry out vegetation releves at the landscape scale and ii) the database designed to store and fit synreleves, as part of the national VegFrance database. This paper presents the structure of the “Paysage” database, the metadata collected together with plants communities in the synreleves (and geosynreleves), the method to record the synreleves and how they are managed for the mapping of series and geoseries. The interpretation of the dataset regarding anthropic pressure on this landscape will be suggested.