M2 - Plant Biodiversity and Management of Tropical Ecosystems (BioGET)

The objective of this UE is to allow the implementation of projects defined in the framework of the UE project of M1S2.

Synthetic content of the EU:

- Tutor-led autonomous work by groups of students: readjustment of the project's objectives and methodology if necessary, acquisition of data, ecological and/or evolutionary analyses and interpretations according to the provisional schedule defined in M1S2, restitution of results in the framework of a conference common to the different courses.

Methods of control of knowledge:

As for the M1 project UE, the UE is based on a problem-based learning approach. Students are therefore evaluated as they go along on how they are progressing with their project (40% CC), and then at the end of the semester on their ability to present the results of their project and discuss them in an oral presentation at a general restitution conference (60% of the overall mark).

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This course approaches the issues surrounding ecosystem management from the perspective of social sciences, and more particularly "science studies". It aims to contribute to the development of a general culture related to the relationship between ecological sciences and societies, and to equip participants to analyze social issues and underlying socio-scientific controversies. The first part of the course provides a conceptual and methodological framework for the presentation of a reflexive tool for analyzing the interplay of actors and arguments (epistemological, axiological) involved in socioscientific controversies, and illustrates this tool with current examples. Subsequently, thematic presentations by ecological researchers illustrate a variety of issues surrounding ecological sciences, and serve as a basis for the application and acquisition by students of the reflexive analysis tool. Students are evaluated on their ability to mobilize this analytical framework in order to position themselves in an individual and argued manner in controversies related to ecological sciences.

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The pedagogical objective of this course is to reposition the main types of soil on a global scale, to explain their formation and to identify the mineral phases or the main abiotic factors likely to regulate the biological activity of soils. Based on this analysis, the different soil organisms (micro-organisms, micro-, meso- and macro-fauna) will be presented as well as their relationships in order to reposition the cycle of organic matter and mineral elements in the soil at different temporal and spatial scales. The notions of recycling, looping of biogeochemical cycles and community assembly rules will also be addressed. The organization of this course is based on lectures and conferences as well as fieldwork.

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Module Objectives:

To acquire the knowledge necessary to understand recent advances and current debates in the field of tropical plant community ecology, as a basis for the evaluation of environmental policies and projects.

Module Content:

The module provides an introduction to the structure and functioning of tropical forest and savanna ecosystems. It discusses the determinants, characteristics and some of the implications for management and conservation. It also addresses some of the ecological controversies surrounding tropical forest ecosystems.

Teaching and Learning Methods: 

- Course (6 hours)

- Thematic bibliographical analyses by groups (12 hours) and discussion during the restitutions with external experts (8 hours).

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The objective of this course is to accompany the student in the construction of his professional project and his search for an internship, while beginning to prepare his integration into professional life by an exhaustive and personal vision of possible career paths.

In concrete terms, meetings with different speakers allow the presentation of the doctoral thesis (presentation of the GAIA doctoral school, presentations by thesis students) and the professional environment targeted by the different courses (research professions and the non-academic sector). Activities specific to each pathway then help to better target the scientific fields most closely related to the students' professional projects. Lastly, the course includes practical sessions designed to prepare students to write scientific articles in English.

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The objective of this course is to explore the diversity of life forms and morphological and functional adaptations of plants living in tropical regions. Each of the major biological types will be analyzed (trees, grasses, lianas, epiphytes, hemi-epiphytes, etc.) in order to understand their architecture and modes of development, and to study the particularities of their functioning.

A comparative reflection will attempt to define the nature of the adaptations that have allowed these plants to occupy all the available niches.

Particular emphasis will be placed, in an evolutionary perspective, on the study of the bio-mechanical and in situ conduction properties that characterize some of them.

Another focus will be put on tree ontogeny by addressing notions of architecture in relation to the processes involved in the establishment of large tropical tree crowns, including root strategies. The interaction between vegetative structures, reproduction and secondary growth will be addressed in practical work on tropical material.

The notions of growth and competition in a stand will be approached on simple cases with notions of growth modeling.

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This course introduces students to social science research (from the construction of the subject to the writing of a report), with an emphasis on qualitative methods. It is essentially composed of a field survey on the general theme of managing nature in the city. It aims to introduce students to the social dimensions of environmental management issues, as well as to the production and processing of qualitative data in the social sciences. In this respect, it trains students to develop diagnoses of environmental management situations by working on three main types of skills: (i) Producing and analyzing heterogeneous data (written, oral, observational), (ii) Analyzing multidimensional, complex and singular situations, (iii) Recounting the complexity of these situations to a public.

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1. Bayesian inference: Motivation and simple example. 

2. The likelihood. 

3. A detour to explore priors. 

4. Markov chains Monte Carlo methods (MCMC)

5. Bayesian analyses in R with the Jags software.  

6. Contrast scientific hypotheses with model selection (WAIC).

7. Heterogeneity and multilevel models (aka mixed models. 

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Strategic Environmental Management Analysis (SEMA) is a theoretical framework that makes it possible to base an analysis of a management situation on a clearly expressed environmental concern. It allows for a precise clarification of the exercise of environmental responsibility in relation to the exercise of other collective responsibilities, within the framework of a pluralistic debate. By identifying the basic structures of environmental management situations, particularly in international contexts, it provides the criteria that explain the difficulties that public policies on the environment have in emerging in relation to other areas of public action - in particular development policies - and that make it possible to identify the room for manoeuvre to encourage changes to take greater responsibility for environmental problems. The module is based on two main elements: (1) the presentation of different research-intervention studies using this framework of analysis in order to explain the implementation of the ASGE work registers, (2) a supervised assignment that combines the critical analysis of environmental project documents with the development of an alternative research-intervention study proposal using the ASGE framework, which is presented and discussed collectively at the end of the module.

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Land use change is responsible for about 10% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Tropical forest ecosystems can participate in both pillars of addressing global warming, namely mitigation and adaptation:

-Tropical forests and plantations are important potential carbon sinks, their biomass can provide energy to replace fossil fuels, while reducing deforestation and forest degradation and improving forest management (REDD+) can significantly reduce anthropogenic GHG emissions

-The ability of human societies, which are still essentially rural, to adapt to climate change depends in part on the state of available natural resources, while the necessary adaptation of tropical ecosystems to climate change can be facilitated by human interventions.

In the context of the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, mechanisms such as the Sustainable Development Mechanism (SDM) and REDD+, and voluntary markets, as well as ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change, provide a new opportunity for tropical forestry, as well as a potential lever for tropical forest protection or restoration. The module provides an understanding of the basic concepts of climate change, the role of tropical ecosystems in the global carbon cycle, and the technical, policy and economic responses to climate change issues.

Module Content:

This module provides basic knowledge on topics such as the carbon cycle, the mechanisms and consequences of climate change, and the technical and policy frameworks for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The potential of tropical agro-ecosystems is assessed based on scientific studies and existing operational projects.

Teaching and Learning Methods:

-Course (18 hours)

-TD (3 hours).

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This course proposes notions of plant architecture and development of the whole plant (stem and root) in the context of a diagnosis of the state of trees and their functioning in view of a management adapted to the objectives. The consideration and management of trees meet different criteria depending on the contexts considered (forest, fruit trees or urban). The following topics will be addressed in a theoretical and practical manner with case studies. (1) Generalities on morphology and architecture of the whole plant, (2) Life trajectories of the tree, forms of expectation (3) Trauma (competition, pruning, bio-aggressors) and reactivity of architectures (4) Practical work on the diagnosis of forest, fruit and urban trees

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The goals of this course are to deepen the key concepts related to climate change, to illustrate important concepts in ecology and evolution in the light of climate change, in many different ecosystems, and to synthesize the different scientific and societal questions and issues raised by CC.

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"Businesses play a central role today in the dynamics of ecosystem degradation, and as such are increasingly called upon to contribute to their protection. How then can we improve the consideration of biodiversity issues by companies, and the involvement of companies in the territorial management of ecosystems? Moreover, if conservation sciences and ecology propose a growing number of indicators and data to evaluate biodiversity in its multiple forms, how can this information be structured so that it can be used for strategic and collective action and dialogue between stakeholders?

An ecological accounting approach as a management science discipline allows us to address these issues of structuring ecological indicators and information systems, the responsibilities of the various actors who interact with ecosystems, and the associated forms of accountability.

The field of ecological accounting and its recent developments on biodiversity aim to transform the accounting systems traditionally used by firms in order to better take into account the value of natural capital (biodiversity, ecosystems), and thus anchor it at the heart of management processes at different levels of corporate management. Innovation in ecological accounting also exists on other perimeters (national, at the scale of ecosystems) and can thus make it possible to create articulations at different scales of ecosystem governance.

The interactive lectures are punctuated by exercises of varying length that put the students in an active position:

- reading and facilitated discussion of scientific articles in the field;

- game for comparative analysis of natural capital accounting tools and models, etc.

-A case study of the mobilization of ecosystem accounting approaches

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1 "The way in which the modern West represents nature is the least shared thing in the world" (Descola, 2005, p. 56). According to anthropologist Philippe Descola, the category of "Nature," as a reality separate from the human world, is an invention of Europeans that is only one of the possibilities available to societies to account for the living and non-living beings that surround them.

If Philippe Descola contributes to renewing questions about the relationship between society and the environment, he nevertheless draws on a long tradition in the human and social sciences. Numerous works have already explored the various forms of knowledge and social organization to which these relationships give rise: ethnoscience, anthropology of technology, economic anthropology, ethnoecology, sociology of science and technology, etc.

This issue is far from being confined to the academic sphere. It also arouses the interest of actors in conservation (biodiversity, natural resources, etc.) and industry (pharmacology). It also mobilizes so-called "indigenous" populations who claim, both locally and internationally, access to resources and the preservation of an intangible heritage.

2. Situated at the meeting point of the social sciences and the life sciences, these disciplines analyze how human societies use plants, animals, and other components of the environment, but also how their conceptions and representations of their environment(s) guide these uses. This research also explores how human societies organize themselves, perpetuate themselves, change to adapt to new contexts (globalization, global changes) and transmit knowledge about their relationships with nature.

For a long time, these disciplines focused more specifically on the interrelations between so-called "traditional" societies and their immediate environment. Subsequently, since the 1970s, researchers have reconsidered the distinction between so-called "traditional" and "modern" societies in order to better address new contemporary environmental and social transformations.

Indeed, on the one hand, local societies, even the most isolated, are affected by events that are decided and take place on different scales (international conventions, economic crises). Their immediate environment is also affected by global phenomena (climate change, erosion of biodiversity, etc.). In return, their actions can also have international ecological, social and economic repercussions, when, for example, these societies organize themselves to bring their claims to international arenas.

On the other hand, the relationship that modern societies have with their environment is being reconfigured in the face of the observation that the planet is increasingly "artificialized" and threatened by ruptures and serious crises. The place of fauna and flora is being reconsidered and is the subject of controversy as to their rights. Moreover, the entry into a new geological era, the Anthropocene, is invoked to challenge both the natural sciences and the human and social sciences on the need to consider differently a common history of the environment and societies.

3. The very work of scientists and engineers is apprehended in a new light. In this respect, a new scientific project in the humanities and social sciences aims at reconsidering the role of "non-humans" and calls for finding other analytical categories than those of Nature and Culture. New scales and methods of investigation are also envisaged to analyze global processes.

These recent changes in scale invite the researcher in the humanities and social sciences to (re)consider his or her approach through a reflexive approach: he or she is no longer a simple observer, but can also be a real actor in the processes, when not directly involved in a social movement.

4. The objective of this module is to introduce these different scientific and operational fields. It is to provide students with reference points and elements for reflection, in order to be able to construct scientific questions on the relationships between societies and the environment, in order to reflect on the ways in which current environmental and social issues can be dealt with. The varied geographical and disciplinary experiences of the speakers will make it possible to illustrate the approach through a wide range of ecosystem types, socio-cultural contexts and themes. In the time available, we will not pretend to cover all the themes, approaches and methods in an exhaustive manner. Any student wishing to delve deeper into this area will need to engage in a more in-depth training process.

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"The general objective is to give students the basic knowledge necessary to understand international ecopolitics and the main paradigms that underlie them: international environmental agreements and commitments and their implementation in the Southern context; actors on the international scene the place and role of donors and the strategies of environmental NGOs; norms and instruments they tend to disseminate."

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The objective of this course is to help students finalize their professional projects and prepare for the post-master's program.

The EU is organized at the level of the course, with regular discussion sessions between the teaching staff and the students.

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The individual M2 internship lasts approximately 5 to 6 months and must be carried out, depending on the course, in a research laboratory or a structure in the non-academic sector. It allows the student to acquire in-depth professional experience in the field of biodiversity, evolution or ecology. It can be carried out in a local, national, or international structure, on a subject validated by the teaching staff in order to meet the objectives of the course followed by the student.

Evaluation: The internship is evaluated during a public defense before a jury during which the content of the thesis and the quality of the answers to the jury's questions are evaluated. The behavior and dynamism of the student during the internship are evaluated by the internship supervisor.

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