This summer, the Mediterranean climate, hot and dry, affected a large part of the country, in particular the pine forests of the Landes and Gironde.
“We are going to have
increasingly significant, more frequent and more intense
droughts .
This year is a warning signal”
, warns Xavier Bartet, deputy director of the research, development and innovation department of the National Forestry Office (ONF).
Despite the new fires, the French forest tends to expand and become denser.
"Its area has increased by more than 2 million hectares in twenty years, to reach around a third of the territory and 17 million hectares"
, recalls Nathalie Bréda, research director at Inrae in the joint research unit Silva, near Nancy.
The effects of drought on trees have been studied for a long time, long before climate change.
Dendrochronology (the study of tree rings to measure their annual growth)
“taught us that the drought of 1921, in…
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