Paper short abstract:

Modelling practices have a key role in how scientists foresee and anticipate the responses of forests to climate change. This paper aims to identify the network of technological knowledges, research practices, and collaborations, by which scientists assess the future of French forests.

Paper long abstract:

In today's research agendas the concept of "climate change" prevails in any assessment of the future of French forests. Forests modelers have developed technological devices and practices, networks of collaborations and ways of reasoning and justifying their activities so as to elaborate conjectural representations about how French forests could evolve in the future. This paper investigates how scientists construct a "climate change problem" in their forest modelling studies. How do they design their studies and in particular their models so as to integrate the consequences of climate change? How do scientific practices (graphs, maps, results, ways of knowing or world views) construct and embody the reality of "climate change" which is partly invisible and not happened yet? The paper is based on semi-structured interviews with scientists. It first explores how scientists build tangible images, visions and representations of the evolution of French forests through the development of modelling processes, and new collaborations and skills in statistics and computer sciences. The paper also aims to characterize the modalities and the principles of a "conjectural" knowledge which create several visions of the future of French forests which both scientists and end-users will base their recommendations and decisions on.