Forestry Sciences

Forestry atlases, descriptions of forestry sites or technical guides for Mediterranean foresters: they describe species, areas, planting and reproduction methods of trees (except fruit trees).

This collection includes some thirty works on forestry, mainly produced by Cemagref ftitrerom 1980 to 2000.

During these years, the concept of autecology was developed, in which the tree is no longer studied as a potted plant, but as part of a whole: the stand. The approach takes into account field data such as geology, pedology, companion plants as well as climatic and geographical conditions.

This has led to the notion of a "forest site", an "area of land of variable size, homogeneous in its physical and biological conditions".

Then the "site typology" tool, which provides a classification of the site types existing on a territory as well as and a description and determination key accessible to forest services.

The forest site catalogues in the collection are documents that list all the site types present in a forest region, while the "Guides techniques du forestier méditerranéen français" (technical guides for French Mediterranean foresters) are an adaptation of the technique to Mediterranean regions.

It can be said that this type of forestry literature is a good illustration of the transition period from a classic "productivist" silviculture to a more integrated and "ecological" one.