SALUD - Understanding the links between forest and human health, vulnerability to global changes, and biological diversity

Objectives

The SALUD project seeks to better understand how the health of forest ecosystems directly or indirectly influences human health.

To this end, it is structured around four main objectives:

• Assess the influence of forest management history on biodiversity, stand structure, and forest resilience. Old-growth forests, untouched for several decades, will serve as a reference state to characterize a “healthy” ecosystem;
• Analyze the vulnerability of forests to major hazards: wildfire risk and phytosanitary threats (pathogenic fungi and insects);
• Quantify tick population density and pathogen prevalence (particularly Borrelia spp.) along a forest management gradient. This approach will allow testing the dilution and amplification hypotheses of zoonotic risks in relation to biodiversity;
• Integrate these different dimensions to understand how forest health—for example, through trophic networks and ecosystem services—affects human health. This will provide essential knowledge for designing operational indicators and guiding sustainable management strategies that reconcile conservation, risk prevention, and human well-being.

Approaches

To achieve these objectives, SALUD adopts a multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach, combining ecology, genetics, epidemiology, and modelling.

The approach first relies on the selection of “pilot sites” in mountain beech–fir forests, representative of different management histories (exploited forests, forests abandoned for several decades, old-growth forests). On these sites, multitaxonomic inventories (plants, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, bats) will be conducted, along with structural (composition, regeneration, deadwood, canopy openness) and genetic (adaptive diversity of trees) measurements.
At the same time, tick density and pathogen prevalence will be assessed through standardized sampling and molecular analyses. These data will be related to host community composition, identified through trapping, acoustic monitoring, and floristic surveys.

Concerning fire risk, measurements of combustibility (deadwood, microclimate, litter moisture content) and modelling will help assess forest stand vulnerability.
All data will be integrated into trophic network analyses and multi-service models to link forest health, biodiversity, and health risks. This integrative approach, also drawing on national databases and remote sensing, will generate reliable indicators to evaluate and anticipate the impacts of forest management on both human and ecosystem health.

Participants

INRAE units involved

• URFM - Unité de recherche Écologie des Forêts Méditerranéennes
• UR LESSEM - Laboratoire écosystèmes et sociétés en montagne
• UMR RECOVER - Risques, écosystèmes, vulnérabilité, environnement, résilience
• UMR BIOEPAR - Biologie Epidémiologie et Analyse de Risque en santé animale - Oniris
• UR EFNO - Unité de recherche Écosystèmes forestiers
• URZF - Unité de recherche Zoologie Forestière
• UMR Silva
• UMR TETIS - Information spatiale au service des territoires et de l'environnement
• UREP - Unité de recherche Écosystème Prairial
• UMR BIOGECO - Biodiversité, gènes et communautés

Partners

Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement - Université Marie et Louis Pasteur