CHOIX1

The UE will consist of a case study to which the students will have to respond. The teaching staff of the UE will represent the management of design offices responsible for carrying out impact studies following a development project.

The students will play the role of experts from the consultancy firms, and will have to carry out analyses of the project area. They will have to provide a report on their impact study, in which they will have identified the ecological issues and ranked them according to their importance. They will also have to give an oral presentation of their study.

The UE will be structured around 6 2-hour TD sessions at the beginning of the semester, during which the following points will be covered:

TD1: Introduction to the EU, presentation of what an impact study is and what is expected of such a study (this part will be carried out by a professional whose job it is to check impact studies), presentation of the status of the areas studied: ZNIEFF, Natura 2000.

TD2 to 6: Presentation of analysis methods for different groups of organisms (plants, arthropods, herpetofauna, avifauna and chiropterans, soil fauna, etc.).

For the remainder of the EU, students will be asked to propose study protocols for estimating the potential impacts of the planned project. The protocols set up will have to enable impacts to be assessed as closely as possible, and the studies will have to budget their interventions. They will then be given time in the field to set up their protocol, collect data and analyze it. The teaching team will tutor the groups to guide them in their work. They will write a dissertation based on specifications provided by the teaching team. This deliverable must be supported by field data and bibliographical data. They will defend their work in front of the teaching team during an oral presentation.

Several study areas were targeted in Montpellier: Triolet Campus, Mosson River, Parc de la Vallet, Montpellier Center, Parc Méric, Rives du Lez, Garrigues de la Lauze...

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This UE is a first approach of Conservation Sciences according to the points of view of the various actors:

- scientific approach: fundamental and practical approach to the conservation and restoration of populations and communities

- societal approach: the role of the scientist in the management of species and ecological environments, and interactions with other conservation stakeholders (managers, local players)

- ethical approach: reflection on biodiversity values (quantifiable, preferential, normative) and their application according to different models, placed in a historical context (mainly ecosystem services and sustainable development)

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This introductory course will capitalize on the mathematical tools encountered throughout the bachelor's degree, and particularly in the "Modeling the living world: theory" course (S4 option), to provide an overview of the different approaches and techniques for modeling the living world. All the major families of mathematical models will be covered: both static (optimization problems, game theory) and dynamic (extensions of the systems seen in S4, introduction to stochastic processes). Examples of applications of these models will be diversified, covering a wide range of biological systems as well as different levels of organization (metabolic, epidemiological, meta-community models, etc.). Particular attention will be paid to epistemological aspects (contributions of modeling to the construction of theories in life sciences) and practical aspects (identifiability, calibration and parametric sensitivity on the one hand, digital implementation/simulations on the other). Last but not least, it will provide an opportunity for students to familiarize themselves with research themes involving modeling, developed in the Montpellier area.

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This UE is structured around a professional inventory approach, during which students will be put in real-life situations to showcase their naturalist skills. It will consist of a field study, mainly involving field supervision by SPS for project follow-up. In this respect, it is in line with the logic of the former CMI (Opus 4).

Eight groups of 5 students will work on the inventory of a specific taxon within the framework of a clearly identified scientific problem. The study area will vary from year to year, and will be chosen by the teaching team according to opportunities for collaboration with organizations interested in the proposed approach. The organizations approached are :

- Conservatoire des Espaces Naturels de Languedoc Roussillon

- Zoo du Lunaret, manager of the Lez reserve

- Montpellier metropolis

The feedback will consist of a common deliverable for the whole class, including a hierarchy of conservation issues. The organizations managing the areas studied will be invited to the presentations.

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The aim of this course is to acquire, reinforce and synthesize notions and knowledge in evolutionary paleontology, sedimentology and paleoecology, and apply them to the fossil world. Taken together, these notions provide the keys to infer the stratigraphic context and past environments in which extinct organisms lived.

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