The California coast is a worldwide biodiversity hotspot with a long and rich history of prehistoric and colonial migration, contacts and peopling processes. However, little is still known about the role that these processes played in the configuration of Californian landscapes over time. MeSCAL is designed to fill in this gap in current research by examining the role that past cultural interactions and human mobility played in the configuration of Southern California (SoCal) landscapes during the last 4000 years. Main goals are to analyse the spatial distribution of land-uses and plants following migratory and colonial processes, and to assess their impact into native terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, particularly in terms of floristic richness, landscape structure, and impact on native flora, wetlands and soilscapes. This ambitious interdisciplinary project proposes a novel approach based on the coupling of 1) high temporal resolution multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental analyses –i.e. pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs (NPP), fire history analysis, diatoms, sedimentology, geochemistry- in continental wetlands and marine records, respectively providing local and regional information on vegetation and land-use changes and their impact in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems; 2) calibration of fossil palaeoenvironmental datasets with modern pollen and NPPs analogues of vegetation and land-uses; 3) archaeobotanical analyses furnishing direct information on past consumption and use of plants in relation to migratory and colonial processes; and 4) coupling of paleoenvironmental results with archaeo-historical and ethnographic datasets to gauge landscape changes following prehistoric and colonial settling. Selected study areas are located in coastal (San Diego city and Santa Barbara region) and nearby backcountry (San Emigdio Hills, Kern County) areas. This transect of records will allow us to track differences in landscape changes following colonial settling between coastal areas under direct colonial control and hinterland areas exposed to a lesser colonial influence that may have served as refuge for native populations and landscapes. MeSCAL will contribute to a better understanding of the long-term shaping of SoCal Mediterranean landscape heritages, identities and cultures, and will provide Californian societies and land-management agencies with important historical and cultural information on their landscapes and wetlands that can help promote culturally conscious and sustainable landscape management tools and mitigate current degradation and over-exploitation of SoCal landscapes and wetlands. It will also provide local SoCal Native tribes with historical information on their ancestral landscapes and traditional land-uses that will enrich their cultural identities and help to protect their landscape heritage and traditional lifeways. MeSCAL will surely be a springboard for the candidate’s young career as it will 1) broaden her competences as project manager; 2) help her build an international network of palaeoenvionmentalists and archaeologists working on a ground breaking research topic; 3) foster her visibility at the national and the international spheres; and 4) consolidate her scientific independence.

This project will deliver the first in-depth examination of the cross-national rural geographies of both the concept and phenomenon of gentrification, through an integrated comparative study of the theory, forms and dynamics of gentrification across rural France, UK and USA. The project aims to investigate the salience of rural gentrification as a concept that is capable of explaining rural change in France, the UK and the USA. As a starting point, the project draws upon the concept of 'sociologies of translation' to understand past and current differential meanings and uses of the term rural gentrification within academic, policy and popular discourses in France, UK and USA. An asset-based theorisation of rural gentrification will be developed to create empirical indicators of the presence and use of social assets within rural gentrification. Using these empirical indicators and comparable measures of rural, urban and peri-urban spaces, census and other national datasets will be mapped to analyse the geographies of gentrification in rural France, UK and USA, and to develop a typology of rural gentrification. Using this typology, detailed comparative studies of rural gentrification spanning a contrasting range of rural regions and rural settlement areas within France, UK and USA will be undertaken using comparable interviews, surveys, and focus groups.

Acoufollow – freezing induced xylem dysfunction and repair Freezing stress is the main factor setting plant distribution at high latitude and elevation. Climate change will not only lead to changes in precipitation patterns and earlier snow melt but also to more climate extremes, which may cause increased winter drought and frost stress in woody plants. Frost has been shown to affect living and dead wood tissues and to impair their hydraulic function by induction of embolism. Embolism (air bubbles enclosed in the wood tissue) blocks water transport and thus impairs the water supply to the crown. Plants have to cope with such hydraulic limitation by repairing dysfunctional wood or forming new wood tissue. Based on the project “Acoufreeze”, which focused on the processes and dynamics during ice formation in the wood, the project “Acoufollow” aims at a better understanding of how plants overcome wood dysfunction following freezing stress. The repair of freezing induced embolism will be studied in in six contrasting model species (Acer pseudoplatanus, Larix decidua, Picea abies, Juniperus communis, Rhododendron ferrugineum, Sorbus aucuparia) both in controlled temperature chamber experiments and in the field. At high elevation field sites, monitoring under natural conditions and in snow manipulation experiments are planned. Analyses are based on ultrasonic acoustic emission and stem diameter measurements, wood core measurements and various complementary methods (wood pressure probes, infrared thermography, hydraulics, micrometeorology etc.). Here, use of ultrasonic and stem diameter systems will be most challenging with respect to harsh winter conditions. Experiments, numerical simulations and field monitoring are expected to unravel the complex spatio-temporal dynamics of wood pressure during freeze-thaw cycles and embolism recovery. Monitoring and snow manipulation approaches will enable to analyse embolism formation and repair under highly constrained environmental conditions and facing various snow depth situations. In consequence, relevant climate parameters will be linked to multi-decadal growth responses of study species to enable projections of future critical conditions for wood dysfunction and repair. The project is based on a cooperation between UMR PIAF (INRA-Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France), Geolab (CNRS-Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France), the Department of Botany (University of Innsbruck, Austria) and Department of Botany BOKU University (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria). The close cooperation of involved partners, which contribute expertises in different methodical and scientific aspects, will enable new insights into the underlying processes during and after freezing of plant wood and its relevance for plants under changing climate. Results will help to better understand freezing in study species and its relevance to plant life at high elevation, but also improve our knowledge of freezing tolerance and resilience of plants in general.

Outdoor activities create a permanent human presence in mountain territories. The increasing number of outdoor activities on mountain territory calls for a better understanding of human presence and their consequences on wildlife. This presence could indeed have negative effects on wildlife demography and mountain biodiversity. HUMANI is an interdisciplinary project that focuses on how outdoor recreation affect mountain ecosystems and from there on, provide managers with tools to better concile the development of outdoor activities with conservation and management of wildlife. It focuses on interrelationships between wildlife and both hiking (during summer and winter including snowshoe and mountaineering ski) and hunting activities. This project will identify and analyse human behavior in mountains and their different values linked to emblematic wildlife and conservation measures, while measuring the consequences of human presence on emblematic mountain wildlife. following the recommendations done by the french Biodiversity Research Foundation.. In order to understand the interrelationship between outdoor activities and mountain wildlife, our overarching goal is to develop an integrated analysis of (1) the use and perceptions of the environment by outdoor activities participants, (2) human-wildlife interactions in the shared spaces between humans and wildlife, (3) the management practices and effectiveness to raise recreationists awareness that together will lead to informed management guidelines. The analysis will focus on a gradient of territories with different status of protection and management in order to confront the interrelationships between recreationists and wildlife in a diversity of contexts. This inter-sites comparative analysis should disclose how extant management and protection status influence human and animal behaviors. The expected project results are : (1) the development of an interdisciplinary methodology aimed at better understanding human - wildlife relationships ; (2) the identification of a typology of outdoor activities participants according to their outdoor activities experience and expectation and their perception of wildlife and of their own impacts on wildlife ; (3) the production of knowledge about human-wildlife interactions in shared spaces with different levels of constraining protection measures for human ; (4) the production of knowledge about wildlife disturbance and human impacts on ecosystem, which is essential for improving efficient management policies.

Modelling fluvial morphodynamics in the face of environmental changes requires the consideration of feedbacks between hydrogeomorphological processes and riparian vegetation dynamics. Hydrogeomorphological processes control vegetation dispersal, recruitment, establishment and succession. In turn, vegetation strongly impacts water flow and sediment transport. Only a restricted set of riparian plant traits are needed to describe the response of vegetation to, and its effect on, river morphodynamics. However, biogeomorphological feedbacks are still poorly considered in fluvial morphodynamics numerical modelling. The objective of the project NUMRIP is to develop a numerical model of river biogeomorphological dynamics integrating feedbacks between hydrogeomorphological processes and a set of key riparian vegetation functional traits. We will develop an innovative scientific tool for fluvial hydrosystems management and restoration.