Presentation

Become aware of the wealth and vulnerability of underground environments

Underground environments, unlike other environments such as the mountains or the coast, are still rarely approached as areas in their own in terms of environmental, economic or territorial issues or problems. Their approaches, particularly in France, are still very segmented by discipline or by category of use, and these, with the exception of a few thematic entries (habitat of bats, archaeological heritages), are relatively little taken into account in public policies.

However, given the functioning of these environments, more specifically karst and interactions with the surface, they are highly reactive to climatic, environmental changes and anthropogenic activities. This gives them vulnerability and as many challenges to preserve the quality of underground resources, biodiversity, preserving environments and heritage.

This low consideration is most likely explained given their invisibility by the greatest number and not very easy accessibility.

It is also due to a lack of knowledge, including in protected natural areas or in sites subject to development projects, itself induced by :

• the great heterogeneity of the current documentation and the absence of standardized methodology preventing the homogeneous production of descriptive data,
• the complexity of spatial, temporal and flow dynamics, specific to the functioning of karst systems,
• great difficulty in assessing the challenges/threats of karst systems and, consequently, in defining management methods likely to reconcile the uses made of them with the challenges of preserving sites.

The ambition of IFREEMIS, by mobilizing the different categories of actors concerned, is :