The Bocage Landscape in the ‘Bourbonnais’ (Allier Department, France): between Heritage and Modern Dynamics

Abstract

The Allier department has an incredible range of landscapes among which the bocage is the most representative. The bocage is an enclosed field with scattered households. Some areas are also totally free of hedge. We did not want to compare the openfield and the bocage but we tried to prove that there was a different type of bocage. So we studied two opposed sectors situated in the East and in the West of this department. The use of aerial shootings and their processing in a G.I.S. (Geographical Information System) allowed us to map the differences between the two areas in the last 50 years. This objective description obtained from actual and past data helped us analyse the change factors in the whole bocage of the Allier department.

Keywords

• Bocage
• Allier department
• Landscape mutation
• G.I.S.
• Photo interpretation