Environmental Sciences

This teaching unit is designed to provide a general context for understanding Earth sciences and biology, while also taking into account the fields of humanities and social sciences. Today's Earth is not detached from its past. To understand the impacts of environmental and climatic transformations on planet Earth, a diachronic (long-term, change over time) and synchronic (spatial variations) approach is necessary.

Consequently, this EU presents the history of the Earth through geological time. It discusses the structure, composition, and processes of the Earth. Issues, concerns, and problems related to natural hazards are also included. It will also include lessons that provide students with the necessary foundations to understand the societal challenges surrounding climate and environmental issues. The benefits of this course unit are essential for the well-being of tomorrow's society, enabling the training of young citizens or future workers who are capable of analyzing, critiquing, and thinking about past, present, and future environmental and climate issues, and participating in decision-making in societal debates dealing with environmental risks. This course unit was therefore designed by teacher-researchers from different scientific fields (Earth and Water Sciences, Ecology, Philosophy, Political Science), demonstrating that approaches ranging from fundamental to operational are necessary.

Hourly volumes:

CM: 36 hours

The objectives of this learning unit are to provide a robust scientific framework for the concepts commonly referred to as "global warming."

Behind this societal challenge of global change lies a multitude of scientific questions involving many different disciplines, but these disciplines struggle to break down barriers between them. The primary objective of this EU, which focuses on the "terrestrial environment," is to break down barriers between disciplines and show that climate/environmental issues must be studied using different concepts and tools. The aim is to learn the language of interdisciplinarity necessary to understand the complex system that is the Earth. Students will take courses taught by geologists to learn how to characterize the physical Earth, paleontologists to show how biological diversity has varied over time, paleoclimatologists and biogeochemists to teach methods for reconstructing changes in the carbon cycle and ancient and future climates, ecologists and hydrologists to address the impact of global change, philosophers to examine the relationship between humans and nature, and political scientists to present the different forms of struggle and resource mobilization in the process of constructing environmental policies.

The educational objective is to help them understand the interactions between geophysical and social processes, and to encourage them to analyze and understand the strategies of the actors involved, the interests at stake, and the expertise mobilized in institutional spaces to define and impose a particular definition of environmental issues.

No

Continuous assessment (CA): 100%

1) Scientific background (10 CM)

- Presentation of the EU and its interdisciplinary nature. Presentation of the objectives and integrated teaching method (1CM)

- Introduction to the Earth system, Physical Earth, Evolution of the Earth (2CM)

- Paleobiogeosphere/geological crises, habitat fragmentation, etc. (2 CM)

- Radiative balance, passive measurements - Satellite tools (1 CM)

- Carbon Cycle "Everyone's Talking About It" - COP-IPCC-IPBES - Short-Term Biogeochemical Carbon Cycles - Long-Term Carbon Cycle (2 CM)

- Water cycle (1CM)

- Overview of climate change over the long term versus the present and future (1CM)

Conferences (2CM)

• Past geological events (i.e., volcanism, rocks, Deccan Traps)
• Extinction crisis – paleobiodiversity

2) Methods (3 CM)

- Satellite tools with various applications (living/physical earth + natural hazards), radiation balance, passive measurements

- How to reconstruct the past (paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, paleoenvironments, paleoecology, etc.): 1) climate and environmental archives (ice, speleothems, etc.) 2) Tools for reconstructing the past (C and O isotopes, pollen, charcoal, etc.) 

- How to predict the future: climate models (climatologists, etc.)

3) Causes of natural climate variability—Role of the oceans—Orbital parameter cycle (2 CM)

4) Impacts and proposed solutions (4 CM)

- climate change on biodiversity (1 CM)

- Climate change and changes in land use and anthropogenic vegetation cover on water resources (e.g., SNO AMMA CATCH studies) (1 CM)

- global changes to marine ecosystems (1 CM)

- protection/remediation/resilience of ecosystems (dam, etc.) (1 CM)

5) Climate debate—Societies (3 CM)

-Analysis of environmental policies: Institutions, interests, and expertise (1 CM)

-Anthropology of Nature (1 credit)

-Scientific documentary Climate-Society Debates (1 CM)

NB: conferences will be scheduled at the end of thematic blocks.