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The International Geographical Bibliography (IGB), 1891-1991, a testimony of a century of geography : some results of a formal analysis. The durability of the Bibliographie, which was created by the Annales de Géographie as the major document of a scientific scheme, shows the relatively good success of French academic geography for the past century. Its history follows the evolution of the institutionalization of geography. Strong and lasting ties with the publishing house Armand Colin were developed ; the Bibliographie started out as part of the Annales de Géographie ; then, in 1921 it became a publication of the Association de géographes français. The Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) progressively took it over in the fifties. The international network of academics that contributed to the reviews has been relayed since 1976 by the INTERGEO CNRS team. The Bibliographie has now become a database. For the last few years the INTERGEO team has been collaborating with a national center of documentation, the Institut de l'information scientifique et technique (INIST). A work of French geographers at first, the Bibliographie has always received international support, as it is testified by the patronage of the IGU in the thirties when it became the Bibliographie géographique internationale (1932). Thus the history of the journal shows a remarquable institutional continuity, in spite of the changes that go with the transformations of scientific research during the 20th century. Selected recension is still the aim ; there has been a great stability in the editorship and in the classification scheme for at least three quarters of a century. Still several periods can be pointed out. They show recent changes in documentary methods on one hand, and a chronology truly epistemological on the other hand. Following the decisive innovations of the end of the 19th century that give way to stability for half a century, the fifties are a time of adjustments, while the seventies undertake a reorganisation of the geographic material.

A hundred years of geomorphology in the Annales de Géographie. At the beginning, geomorphology was somewhat unfocussed... Many papers published only treat of geology, without any consideration for landforms. Exploration reports are numerous, as explorations were aimed to taking possession of colonial territories, mainly in Africa. Some of them have a clear scientific value (i. those by Y. Urvoy). At the beginning of the century, E. de Martonne treats of glacial landforms but the most advanced publications are those of a Commandant of Engineers, O. Barré. Just before and during World War II, climatic geomorphology became a matter of discussions. E. de Martonne has been equivocated when intending to treat « tropical » geomorphology. A. Cholley, who has published only a few papers, under a reminiscent davisian vocabulary, adopted what is, in fact, a systems approach and based palaeo-environmental reconstructions on the investigation of sediments and weathering products.

When the Annales de Géographie were founded, one of the objectives of Vidal de la Blache was to acclimatize the natural sciences to his discipline. His sustained interest in the naturalists' contributions made him able to take advantage of the actual great models of nature in order to shape human geography. Darwinism and neo-Lamarckism are found to be combined in various degrees, i.e. according to the theoretical, methodological or rhetorical dimensions of the ambitionned shaping of human geography.

The creation in Paris, in 1893, of the chair of colonial geography, in those days entrusted to Mr. Marcel Dubois, can be considered as the birth of french tropical geography. During more than half a century, it has above all consisted of a " discovery ", and an inventory of tropical countries through civilian and military missions, and through civil servants holding a post in the different parts of the Empire. Geographers were using collected data to elaborate regional or thematic synthesis, and to make acquired knowledge circulate. Initiated before 1940, the specialization of an increasing number of those geographers is especially to be noted after the second world war, at a time when working opportunities "on the field " were made available: teaching in oversea territories, secondment in a specialized body etc. Researchs achieved through Master's thesis are showing a noteworthy durability of " traditionnal " fields, Western and Central Africa being always more studied than Latin America and Asia. After 1960 especially, even if monographic study remained very popular, a certain number of subjects appeared, or showed a new and rapid development (geographies of developing countries, of languages, health and political geographies) ; the multiple orientations of the discipline can be well observed in ORSTOM, which teams have played an important role in the knowledge of environment and men of tropical regions for more than 30 years. If the specificity of tropical geography (characterized by the creation of CEGET in 1968 in Talence, an internal body of CNRS) was, at a certain time, thrown back into question, this dispute, certainly due to temporary circumstances, did not have tangible repercussions.

Peri-alpine Rhine, Rhone, and Danube : their management, its environmental impacts. — Although the Danube is only in part a peri-alpine stream through its right bank tributaries in Bavaria and Austria, these three rivers, the biggest of the whole E.E.C., are characterized by warm season high waters, important seasonal variations of discharge, and resulting bed instability. From one side, settlement along them is turned dangerous, but, on the other, it is a source of abundant natural resources, which have attracted men during hundreds of years : fishing, hunting, wood for building and handicrafts, and very fertile loam sedimented during the floods. Management attempts to both village protection and a better use of resources have been made in Hungary during the Middle Ages. A system of channels and dykes has been built in order to control floods, draining cultivated land and flooding during a longer period the meadows and marshes for better fishing and game and to protect the settlements. All has been abandonned with the Turkish invasion and the resulting Ottoman rule. Along the Rhine, and to a lesser degree along the Rhone, political division hampered such a systematic management. After the annexion of most of Alsace to the French Kingdom, the Rhine became considered, during the second half of the xvnth and during the whole xvmth centuries, as a " natural defence " combined with the fortifications of Strasbourg and of the new town of Neuf- Brisach. The peasants have been left to their own initiatives. The defences they built lacked any coordination, so that, not unfrequently , what was constructed in a place turned into a danger for the neighbouring ones. Nevertheless, an important experience has been gained in the application of some technics, such as groins edified using long tree-stems in combination with heavy stones. In the 1780' s General d'Arçon established a first comprehensive management scheme, but the Revolution and the Empire wars gained a much greater priority. Nothing has been made during these decades. After Waterloo, France was not in a diplomatic situation enabling her to make proposals. These came from a Colonel of the Baden Dukedom, von Tulla. They were finally accepted by France after the 1830 Revolution and applied until First World War. Their purpose, initially to reduce flood extension, turned, with the emergence of Prussia and the unification of the German Empire, to transform the Rhine into a navigable river. Von Tulla management consisted in a channel rectification combined with two systems of lateral embankments, an inner one, discontinuous, containing the " low " floods, and an outer one, continuous, protecting arable land and settlements. Channelization increased the bed slope, which was foreseen as resulting into a river bed incision which would reduce the extension of flooded areas and enhance the effects of embankment. The Rhine ought to cut its bed deeper. It did, and much beyond any hope... The result turned catastrophic: 500 000 t/year of gravel became transported in Middle-Alsace and, a few km downstream Basel, a surimposition into solid limestones occurred, generating rapids which completely blocked any shipping. At the beginning of the present century, schemes for by-passing these rapids by a lateral canal, on the left bank, have been proposed by alsatian engineers. Of course, the governement of Baden opposed them. When France became victorious of Germany, in 1918, the political situation changed completely and after delays resulting of the obliged consultation of international commissions, Istein Rapids became by-passed by a canal and a hydraulic power plant operated in Kembs. After Second War, the Grand Canal d'Alsace project has resumed. Other problems emerged... A staircase of hydraulic plants coupled each one with a big sluice obliged to dig deep in the pervious alluvium of the Rhine upstream of every plant and sluice, and it drained very efficiently the land along the incision. It destroyed completely the original ecological conditions. Fields and meadows suffered from drought. Tentatives of irrigation were to be made ! In the meantime, Germany recovered and from a beaten ennemy turned into a precious ally in the Cold War. The B.R.D. proposed to abandon the Grand Canal d'Alsace and to manage the Rhine bed itself, each couple power-plant/ sluice being edified on a short derivation from the Rhine. This program is now completed Nevertheless, damage resulted to the biocenosis. Ecotopes have been deprived of any flooding outside the outer embankments since more than a hundred years. Rhine bed incision drained the ground-water, increasing the impact. Many endemic species are deseappering. Ecologists protest... The management of the Rhine has served as a model for the Rhone and the Danube, with only slight differences. On the Rhone, the production of hydraulic electricity has been the first purpose for the management, at the end of the xixth century, and navigation waited until the creation of the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, between the two world wars, to become an objective for an integrated management program. On the Danube, political division turned any management more troublesome. Austrian monarchy imposed an austrian monopoly on shipping. After World War Two, the S.S.S.R., according to its political tentatives to subjugate central Europe, imposed a management for shipping of the Iron Gates, in Roumania. Germany dug canals to link together Rhine and Danube. Ecological protests became strong in Austria and obliged to abandon any channelization in the Marchfeld, near Vienna. A huge project for a big reservoir for producing electric energy, in Gabcikovo, at the border between Slovakia and Hungary, raised too a strong opposition... Political changes which occurred during the very recent years turn investments more difficult and change completely the situation. What will be their impacts ?

Long established trends of socio-economic change in rural Europe have been reversed in recent decades. In many areas depopulation has been replaced by repopulation, and the revised Common Agricultural Policy now aims at reducing outputs of agricultural production rather than increasing them. The European countryside is contested space in which land development clashes with conservation, and environmentalism challenges many taken-for- granted features of agricultural activity. The EC's revised structural funds offer threats to the rural environment as well as promises for socio-economic development. Pluriactivity , despecialisation, extensification, set-aside, and farm-based diversification are key themes for the 1990s.

Deltas are measured by length, width, surface and protruding area. The fundamental geomorphometrical property of a delta can be expressed by the protuberance index proposed here as the ratio of the two latter parameters. In the delta seen as river ending, the radial distribution of the hydrographie network will be simple, cross-connected or tree-structured depending on different river discharge partitionnings. In the delta seen as a coastline, the layout is concentric with a succession disposal of sandy bars and shallow depressions usually briny or saline. The relative influences of tide, waves and river discharge are used to define a classification of embouchures based on W.G. Galloway's and extended to many cases. Delta resource management can be broken down into the river streams and the deltas themselves. In the latter areas, resources can be developed without altering the geomorphometrical and hydrological environment (fishing, hunting, extensive cattle farming...), with some environmental changes (rice fields, irrigated agriculture, salt flats...) or completely obliterating the natural features (industrial land reclamation, deep-water harbours...).

« Medium-sized towns and the opening up of the european market in 1993. » — The building of a united Europe, and in particular the perspective of a single European market in 1993, bring specific threats to bear on the future of the Community's medium-sized towns. Certain factors penalize medium-sized towns in general : for example, the construction of a single financial market results in economies of scale in management costs which are only to the advantage of major towns. Other factors have a more selective effect : for instance, when firms join forces to ensure competitivity at European level this leads to the geographical concentration of their production and distribution sites, thus increasing disparities in tax resources between towns. The local politicians questioned in seven of the E.E.C. countries are, on the whole, aware of these threats. Nevertheless, their comments and expectations reveal that the largest of the medium-sized towns are those in the best position to take up the challenge that the building of a united Europe offers them, since they are the ones most actively developing policies of cooperation in a climate of incrased competitivity.