Spatial Patterns of Vineyard Abandonment and Related Land Use Transitions in Beaujolais (France): A Multiscale Approach

Etienne Cossart, Jessica Pic, Yoann Le Guen and Mathieu Fressard
Additional contact information
Etienne Cossart: CNRS UMR 5600 (Environnement Ville Société), Université de Lyon (Jean Moulin, Lyon 3), F-69008 Lyon, France
Jessica Pic: CNRS UMR 5600 (Environnement Ville Société), Université de Lyon (Jean Moulin, Lyon 3), F-69008 Lyon, France
Yoann Le Guen: CNRS UMR 5600 (Environnement Ville Société), Université de Lyon (Jean Moulin, Lyon 3), F-69008 Lyon, France
Mathieu Fressard: CNRS UMR 5600 (Environnement Ville Société), Université de Lyon (Lumière, Lyon 2), F-69500 Bron, France

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: While the resilience of French vineyards is currently threatened, this paper focuses on the Beaujolais terroir, where the disappearance of vineyards has been qualitatively observed by local stakeholders. A targeted survey was led at three complementary scales. First, we provide an overview of the evolution of agricultural landscapes and practices for the whole Beaujolais area since 1990 from national statistical databases. It shows that the vineyard extent reached a maximum during the 1990s and that significant bifurcation occurred in 2000. Second, we document land use evolution in relation to vineyard abandonment at a more local scale. Three case studies (lower Ardières, Marverand, Merloux) exemplify the main local settings, and the land uses are described over time from an analysis that employed multitemporal photo interpretation. The results quantified the decrease in the vineyard surface extent since 1999: approximately 30% was lost in regular terroirs and 5% was lost in high added-value terroirs. Third, at a fine scale, we explained the precise location of the abandoned parcels regarding the site characteristics (e.g., incoming solar radiation, slope gradient, terroir quality). The results showed differences in evolution patterns between southern and northern Beaujolais. In northern Beaujolais, winegrowers tended to abandon vine parcels that were considered of lower quality; while, in southern Beaujolais, the winegrowers tended to abandon vine parcels in relation to the difficulty of maintenance (remote and steep parcels were preferentially abandoned) or in relation to suburbanization (parcels close to built-up areas were preferentially abandoned).

Keywords: vineyard; abandonment; landscape; land use; Beaujolais (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4695/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4695/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4695-:d:369027

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().