Trame Verte et Bleue Grand Est

Green and Blue Grand Est network:
Biodiversity Initiative

The Green and Blue Network, a tool for the sustainable development of the territory, aims to constitute a coherent network of exchanges at all scales of the national territory so that animal and plant species can, like man, communicate, circulate, feed, reproduce, in other words ensure their respective balances.

The ecological continuities which constitute the Green and Blue Grid are made up of remarkable natural spaces, called reservoirs of biodiversity, connected to each other thanks to movement corridors which are the ecological corridors.

At the scale of the Grand Est Region, the objectives are multiple:

- Put in place facilities that promote exchanges and the movement of biodiversity in the territories concerned;

- Preserve/restore biodiversity reservoirs and facilitate exchanges and travel between them;

- Encourage municipalities to include a large number of developments and reservoirs of biodiversity in their town planning documents;

- Continue to raise residents' awareness of the natural wealth of their municipality by emphasizing the fragmentation of habitats and corridors;

- Strongly encourage elected officials and residents to get involved and participate in the development of the project;

- Contract as many developments as possible over time (including OREs, Real Environmental Obligations);

- Set up the monitoring of facilities and their maintenance over time.

Val-de-Vesle is part of one of the largest natural regions of the Grand Est, the chalky Champagne region.

Openfield landscape (open fields) and residual forest

Agricultural evolution and biodiversity in chalky Champagne:

In this natural region, as seen on the map, the chalky white soils rest on Cretaceous outcrops. The climate is sunny and conducive to cereal, beet and alfalfa crops. The chalky plain is crossed by several floodable alluvial valleys with, from north to south, the Aisne, the Marne then the Aube and the Seine. These green and blue corridors bring a little diversity to this vast open field with endless horizons.

Over the centuries, chalky Champagne has not always been marked by an open landscape. It alternated very contrasting periods where forest environments were often important. The very old grassy steppes naturally evolved into heavily exploited woodlands in Roman times to become cultivated or grazed areas in the Middle Ages.

The Savar

Major reforestation campaigns (Austrian black pine) began in the 1850s and these new plantations gradually gained ground on the savarts grazed by herds of sheep.

A century later, wooded areas cover about 25% of chalky Champagne, but the 1950s were also marked by the advent of new agricultural technologies (fertilizers, mechanization) and post-war economic orientations.

These so-called poor calcareous lands then quickly became supports for intensive production and the land consolidation campaigns enabled massive clearing, illustrated by the creation of agricultural plots of several tens of hectares. In 1970, more than half of the wooded area disappeared as well as almost all of the savarts. Currently presenting the lowest rate of afforestation in the region (less than 7%), chalky Champagne has conversely become over the last decades one of the main European regions producing cereals, beets and alfalfa. The large valleys crossing it are now largely cultivated.

At the municipal level

At Val-de-Vesle, wefts appear: the Vesle valley from SE to NW allows crossing within the arable crops. Human infrastructures also play this role and are oriented in the same way: canal, TGV line, regional line railway, motorway and departmental road 944. As long as their surroundings are not mown, they allow the circulation of flora and fauna. wildlife. On the other hand, crossing them is almost impossible, these 5 elements being parallel. The rest of the town is made up of arable crops, to the north the presence of a military camp constitutes an important island of biodiversity. The ideal would be to be able to connect the village (and therefore the valley) to the camp. The difficulty of the work of setting up facilities within arable crops is a brake on this municipality.

In our municipality, the development projects already recorded are numerous. They concern both communal land and land belonging to individuals, including two farmers. One line of work would be to contact farmers in the area even if the idea of planting hedges on the edge of fields is not yet well accepted by cereal growers.

Some images of the creation of our ponds:

* For ponds: the LPO (League for the Protection of Birds) of Champagne Ardenne does not promote the creation of ponds with tarpaulins and thus favors ponds on the ground that naturally retain water. In the context of chalky Champagne, it is difficult to create ponds. But the Vesle valley and the presence of the Courmelois marshes allow the creation or restoration of old ponds. To create a network, it would be good to work along the length of the river by contacting all the municipalities concerned.

The TVB (Trame Verte et Bleue) objectives identified in the municipality focus mainly on biodiversity reservoirs and are, in order of priority:

- Diversification of habitats, the presence of a few relic orchards testifies to the interest of reconstituting them;

- Facilitate the movement of wildlife through the urbanized area;

- Installation of hedges in the cereal plain to reduce distances in the openfield in order to encourage the movement of wildlife;

- Creation of a network of ponds* (creation and restoration of already existing ponds).