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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Vineyard soil mapping from very high spatial resolution images in hillslope context: a contribution of terroir knowledge.

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The Burgundian vineyard hillslopes (Côte-d’Or, France) exhibit a high diversity of soils resulting from the combination of several natural and anthropogenic factors acting at various spatio-temporal scales. The soil types have major role in viticulture, since they partly determine wine-growing quality. However, soil undergoes important degradation caused by hydric erosion and vineyard management practices. To control this soil heritage for a sustained viticulture in Côte-d’Or, a better knowledge of soil is necessary. The objectives of this work is to characterise vineyard soils and to identify the factors governing their diversity using an interdisciplinary approach crossing geology, geomorphology, pedology and history of soil land use and vineyard management practices.Data have been acquired at a high spatial resolution from different imagery methods i.e. remote sensing, subsurface geophysics, and digital terrain model. At the hillslope scale, high resolution soil maps permit to predict soil agronomical comportment and discuss the spatial soil organisation of vineyard hillslope soils. At the plot scale, these maps highlight the human impact on soil diversity through its role on landscape structure and erosion intensity.Our work shows that the soil diversity of the vineyard hillslopes depends on the spatial scale used to analyse this diversity. At the hillslope scale, soil is gradually evolving along the slope, and is controlled by the geological substrate and topographical variations, and responds to topolithosequence model. At the plot scale, variations of soil thickness and organic status are taken into account and permit to predict soil agronomic behaviour. This soil diversity is partly related to human impact, due by both historical and present vineyard management practices. It appears that human activities have a past and present influence on the terroir construction in Côte-d’Or, through its action on soil diversity.