K6ET 2055 - Cities as Critical Zones: Views from the Earth's Sciences

This lecture will develop the notion of critical zone as an emerging scientific practice in ecological and earth sciences and applied it to the particular case of cities. We will take examples to show how critical zone observatories offer a new perspective on the relationships between living and non-living agents. We will show cities affect the cycle of chemical element and matter in general. Instruments and sensors will be used to provide a representation of the main fluxes of matter and energy passing through the critical zone. This will lead us to introduce urban metabolism methods and concepts.
Jérôme GAILLARDET
Cours magistral seul
English
Attend to the lectures and read the recommended articles.
An interest and basic knowledge in natural sciences is necessary as well as a basic understanding of elementary quantitative mass budgets.
Autumn 2025-2026
Final exam.
Lecture and paper reading.
- Kennedy, C. A., Stewart, I., Facchini, A., Cersosimo, I., Mele, R., Chen, B., ... & Sahin, A. D. (2015). Energy and material flows of megacities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(19), 5985-5990. (available on the web, on Google Scho
- Billen, G., Garnier, J., & Barles, S. (2012). History of the urban environmental imprint: introduction to a multidisciplinary approach to the long-term relationships between Western cities and their hinterland. (available on the web, on Google Scholar)
- Quenet, G. (2015). Versailles, une histoire naturelle. La Découverte.
- Anglade, J., Billen, G., & Garnier, J. (2015). «La Terre» de Zola, une histoire biogéochimique de la Beauce au XIXe siècle. VertigO: la revue électronique en sciences de l'environnement, 15(2). (available on Google Scholar)
- Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (Eds.). (2020). Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics. MIT Press, (a big volume containing several papers on critical zones and cities).