Contenu du sommaire : Territoires ruraux centre-européens / Lacs, étangs et zones humides

Since the beginning of the 1990s, agriculture and rural areas of Central European Countries experienced massive scale transformation. As these countries are joining EU, the question is whether the restructuring process can already make easier their integration. If agriculture keep a place in rural economy, it's less and less decisive for employment and incomes. Analysis is focusing on the functional structure of rural areas. With integration, de-peasantification and de- ruralisation processes are becoming the main stakes.

The fall of the Soviet system in Lithuania and the return to the political independence have lead the way to a process of economic and social transition towards Market economy. As for agriculture, this change in the macro- economic background went together with a structural reform, which intended to transform collective farms - that is to say kolkhoz and sovkhoz — into capitalistic, self-managing enterprises. The restoring of private property in land ownership appeared to be a major factor to initiate the decollectivisation process and the transformation of social relationships in the agricultural sector. The restitution of the nationalized lands to their former owners and the privatisation of the auxiliary plots from the Soviet era have made the family farms to piece together again. Family farming has thus become the dominant form of the agricultural model ; moreover, the characteristic feature of this process is a spatial diversification, as a result of historical legacies, and the setting-up of differentiated agricultural regions.

In the new German Länder, territorial planning policy aims at achieving the functional reconversion of rural areas still marked by the heritage of collectivisation and the extent of the transition crisis. A new territorial mosaic is being laid through functional changes based on the restoration of local self-government and the introduction of competition into rural "amenities", thus bringing into question the evolution of rurality in post-socialist territories.

The 1989 systemic change has brought about a complete renewal of the management principles of municipalities in Hungary, taking into account the ground opening towards democracy and the market economy. They aimed at promoting local democracy and at writing down strict budgetary constraints on municipalities, which have become nearly sovereign as to the management of local affairs. The results of this policy seem nevertheless to remain beyond expectations, at least in rural areas of the Hungarian Great Plain. Rural poverty - together with an unfavorable settlement structure, a somewhat grudging budgetary policy and, which is more, a strong stability of local representatives inherited from the socialist social hierarchy make Hungarian local communities quite unable to run efficiently endogenous development policies.

Co-operation among local governments defines the institutional framework within which social actors try to link local resources to development dynamics depending on other territorial tiers. The analysis is focusing on Hungarian organisational frameworks for micro-regional development, social actor's calling up forms, available resources and territorial development projects. The case of Mohacs micro-region in Baranya 's county (Southern Transdanubia) is selected.

Since 1930, throughout the Soviet period, this lakeside system was plundered for over 30 years and it is this plundering that is now at the heart of economic and environmental concerns. The disasterous management of lake Sevan in Armenia has led to the water level being lowered by 20 metres and a subsequent reduction in the potential of the lake. Ever since indépendance this environmental damage has been the basis for a huge program of rehabilitation, led by the World Bank. However, this debate has exceeded the boundaries of ecological interests. During the post-Soviet transition period and in a conflictual geopolitical context (blockades, breaks in energy supplies) and as the closing down of the Medzamor nuclear centre (which supplies the majority of the internal energy requirements) begins, how much weight do the environmental aspects and the rehabilitation of a lakeside system really carry when the future of the country as a whole is at stake ?

Among the criterions which determinate wind impact to the hydrodynamic of body of water, the fetch is an important parameter. The further course of wind on the body of water is long, the biggest the waves are. When these waves break to the bank, they play a great role to the shore erosion. Over a simple fetch measurement, this study suggests the crossing between mapping and meteorological data. In this way we see appears the role of the wind periodicity and strength in the shore erosion process.

Most of the fishponds are several hundred years old and subjected to various economical and ecological purposes. The draining period event during fish farming management affects negatively the fishpond image by its harmful characters towards the ecological affluent continuum. The lawful framing of this activity and its consequences for the environment are reported. They integrate socio-professional, hydrological and hydrobiologic approaches in order to appreciate exploitation pressure and risk management.

Salt lakes of Cojocna are located on a salt diapir in the Western part of the Transylvanian Basin. Their origin is anthropic (collapse of sedimentary materials which were covering the salty mines) and natural (salt dissolution). The basins are characterized by a very active dynamics : the increased filling, the mobility thresholds between the old mines, the general reduction of the slope, the mergering of many pits, the rapidity of the dissolution process at the contact between water and salt. Salinity differs from one lake to another. Lakes where the sedimentary material have not isolated salt from water show an important growth of salinity from surface to bottom (Durgǎu lake — 42 g/l at 0,5 m and 249 g/l at 43,8 m). When salt was separated from water through sedimentary materials, salinity has decreased to minimal values ; can appear inversions of the values, in the case of pumping out water from one lake to another to maintain the constant level. Due to the very great tourist flux, theses lakes must be preserved and the authors suggest a new town planning.

Delineate wetlands (marshes, ponds,...) with an aim of census and/or of follow-up induce the question of the methods and the tools the best adapted for a given observation scale. This article shows that it is necessary, within the framework of an encased step, to combine remotely sensed data, aerial photographs and ground data acquisition to apprehend these systems from a regional to a compartmental scale.