CHOIX2

The aim 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 (trees, grasses, lianas, epiphytes, hemi-epiphytes, etc.) will be analyzed in order to understand their architecture and modes of development, and to study the particularities of their functioning.

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

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

The focus will also be on tree ontogeny, with a focus on architecture and the processes involved in the development of large tropical tree crowns, including root strategies. The interaction between vegetative structures, reproduction and secondary growth will be covered in practical work on tropical material.

The notions of growth and competition in a stand will be approached using simple case studies, along with notions of growth modelling.

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This course introduces students to social science research (from constructing a subject to writing a report), with an emphasis on qualitative methods. It consists essentially 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 draw up diagnoses of environmental management situations, working on three main types of skills: (i) producing and analyzing heterogeneous data (written, oral, observational), (ii) analyzing multidimensional, complex and singular situations, (iii) conveying the complexity of these situations to an audience.

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