Caractériser la morphologie des parcelles agricoles à l’échelle de la France

Public agricultural policies and the evolution of agricultural techniques have led to a transformation of agricultural landscapes in recent decades. The spatial entity of agricultural management, the plot, is generally described with indicators that do not reflect the complexity of its forms. This article proposes a method to characterize the morphological diversity of agricultural plots at the national scale. Based on data from the Land-Parcel Identification System of metropolitan France (9,3 million plots in 2016), this method combines tools of geomatics and multivariate statistical analysis to produce a typology in 20 contrasting and spatially differentiated plot morphologies based on six indicators related to plot contours and area. We show that simplified plot shapes (rectangular shapes) are particularly present in field crop systems, whereas irregularly shaped plots are typical of grassland systems. We could establish a link with the history of some areas, with a strong representation of large simple plots cereal basins in northern France where land consolidation was generalized in recent decades. The typology of plot morphologies can contribute to model ecosystem services at regional or even national scales or to evaluate public policies for rural areas.