A hilly landscape
Nestled between the Garonne valley and the Lannemezan plateau, the Gers lies at the heart of southwestern Gascony. It is bordered by Lot-et-Garonne to the north, Tarn-et-Garonne and Haute-Garonne to the east, Hautes-Pyrénées and Pyrénées-Atlantiques to the south and Landes to the west. Its prefecture, Auch, lies at the center of the territory, and is home to over 24,000 inhabitants, or just over 10% of the department's population. The local mentality divides the region into two parts: Armagnac and the rest. While this division can be explained historically or culturally - in Armagnac, a unique vine-growing culture on the territory of a former feudal state - it has no legitimacy geologically or geographically. As Gustave Laurent describes it in the Annales de Géographie of 1911, "the Gascon landscape as a whole is profoundly gentle, penetratingly calm even in its monotony [...]. [...] The uniform appearance of Armagnac and the Gers is essentially due to the geological constitution of the soil During the Cretaceous period, as the oceanic plate opened up to form the Bay of Biscay, the Iberian tectonic plate began a slow rotation to the southeast, embedding itself in the Eurasian plate to form the Pyrenees. The Gers carpet curls into gentle valleys along a north-south axis. During the Miocene, the sea retreated from the Landes and the Agenais marshes dried up, giving way to calcareous marl, molasse and quartz sands to the west. Gers soil can be divided into two main categories: "terres fortes" and "boulbènes". The former, which is chalky, tends to be found at the top of hills and on their eastern flanks, while the latter, which is whitish in color and less fertile, is concentrated at the bottom of valleys and to the west of hillsides. The result is different natural vegetation and agricultural practices. Heather, birch and vines flourish in the north-western quarter, corresponding to the Armagnac region. Gaude or dyer's reseda, broom and little thistle thrive on the strong soils where corn, soya and sunflowers are grown. The few karstic plateaus conceal caves that are ideal for speleology, such as the Buguet cave in Bazian or the Sinai cave in Gazaupouy, which can be explored with the GAS or the Spéléo Club de Gascogne. These rare limestone caves and deep chambers need to be explored with an experienced person, as they are "en perte", i.e. crossed by underground rivers.
A territory shaped by rivers and streams
Water is one of the major factors shaping the Gers. The department takes its name from the river that crosses it from south to north. It rises on the Lannemezan plateau in the Hautes-Pyrénées and flows into the Garonne south of Agen. It's just one of many. The Gers region is criss-crossed by rivers with their sources in the Pyrenees, flowing towards the Garonne to the east and north, or the Adour to the west. The Baïse, Save, Osse, Arrats, Gimone and Arros are just some of the rivers that form shallow valleys on a north-south axis. Only one river crosses the Gers: the Adour, which meanders through the south-west of the département and can be discovered on foot or by mountain bike by following the " Sentier de l'Adour ". A network of secondary streams feeds the main courses sparingly. A quick glance at a hydrological map of the Gers shows that the main streams form a broad spectrum, while the secondary network weaves a fairly dense web. On paper, the region looks generously watered, but the reality on the ground is quite different. The flow is often modest, and many streams are little more than a series of puddles with only a slight current running through them. The Roman poet Venantius Fortunatus described the Gers in the 550s as follows: "The Gers drags itself along with great difficulty, as languid as its fish dying on the sand". Nevertheless, the rivers have been developed to limit the devastating effects of flooding on the plains and valley bottoms. Only a few stretches are navigable, such as the Baïse between Valence-sur-Baïse and Saint-Léger in Lot-et-Garonne. It is possible to hire a barge for a few days of river pleasure. Farmers have created numerous lakes and reservoirs to counteract the uneven, random distribution of water, which is quickly absorbed by the molasse soils. Nearly 2,900 reservoirs have been created in the valleys over the last half-century. Some of these are remarkable sites, such as the ponds of Armagnac, spread over 1,000 hectares of ancient ponds, and the reservoirs of Astarac. Many of the watersheds in the Gers are also nature reserves, and the waterholes are ideal resting or living areas for birdlife.
Sparse forests
Inhabited since ancient times, the Gers has undergone regular deforestation to make way for farmland. Forests have all but disappeared, and the landscape is now adorned with copses, coppices, hedges and wooded strips delimiting plots of land. This thinning out of the forest contributes to the patchwork effect of the landscape. The least wooded department in Occitanie, the Gers has been investing in its forests since the 1950s. It has acquired new massifs and currently holds 706 ha of forest. Managed by the Office National des Forêts (ONF), these woods are mainly used for commercial purposes. Sessile oaks and Laricio pines are used for construction and carpentry, firewood and paper pulp. The ONF has implemented sustainable management practices designed to preserve biodiversity and store carbon. Like the forests, natural grasslands have all but disappeared from the landscape. A few remain in the narrow alluvial plains. While the area remains essentially rural, with its hillsides, rivers and plateaux, the landscape has been profoundly altered over the centuries, and there is little evidence left of its original nature.
