Socio-ecological systems: heritage, dynamics, management

The Socio-ecological systems program offers a multidisciplinary training on the environment and its dynamics based on questions and skills developed in environmental geography but also in other disciplines in the field of environmental sciences: ecology, analysis of past and current physical environments, history, planning, anthropology, economics, law, communication, sociology.

A program centered on the interface of nature-societies 

• Analysis of socio-ecological systems with a focus on evolutionary trajectories, their measurement and their consideration in current environmental management
• An enriched curriculum with lessons on landscapes, risks, natural resources, environmental history
• A critical approach to the environment, its development and management

Two thematic objectives

• Spaces, protection, landscapes: spatial approaches to the environment (ecosystems and landscapes, conflicts and mediations, populations and local knowledge) on all scales and in diverse spaces of the North and South
• Heritage, risks, erosions: temporal dimension (both chronological and sedimentary) of the environment, integrating inheritances, risks, impacts (and paleo-impacts), as well as the assessment of abiotic resources

Academic project

• A theoretical and reflective content on the environment and associated concepts (landscape, nature, protection, restoration, resilience, resources, management, communication ...)
• Knowledge of the quaternary and contemporary dynamics of continental environments (processes, evolutions/changes, crises, modes of exploitation, methods of measurement and analysis)
• Training in the management of current environments  (regulatory framework, policies, planning, foresight, diagnosis, management of physical and intangible resources, ecological economics, environmental economics)
• Mastery of tools for the study, representation and management of space but also the acquisition of environmental information, their processing and their limits  (metrology, GIS, remote sensing, field, documentary databases, archives, modeling tools ...)

Reaching out to non-European countries, this program also aims to interest students in other modes of management or conservation than those in France.