En Europe de l’Ouest, de nombreuses espèces de léporidés sont endémiques, ce qui en fait de bons témoins de l’évolution des écosystèmes terrestres dans lesquelles ont évolué les sociétés humaines préhistoriques. Paradoxalement, leur variabilité morphologique est mal connue et la phylogénie établie aujourd’hui, discutable. Ce travail propose de renseigner la diversité morphométrique des lapins et des lièvres sur près de deux millions d’années d’évolution, à travers l’application d’études ostéométriques et en morphométrie géométrique. L’analyse de restes osseux et dentaires – de populations actuelles et de 73 séries fossiles provenant de régions périméditerranéennes couvrant le Pléistocène – permet de caractériser les adaptations des léporidés face aux changements environnementaux et leurs tendances évolutives. Cette étude propose une nouvelle phylogénie pour le lapin et présente les différentes phases de dispersion des taxons à l’échelle de l’Europe occidentale. Ainsi, plusieurs événements de type expansion des populations, recolonisation des territoires depuis des zones refuges et extinctions locales, sont mis en évidence en réponse aux changements climatiques globaux. Ces résultats permettent de discuter la présence de ces petits gibiers dans l’environnement et alimente le débat sur les relations entre ces espèces et les communautés humaines. Leur augmentation significative dans la diète des groupes humains à la fin du Paléolithique supérieur, ne semble pas seulement s’expliquer par des changements cognitifs, culturels ou économiques, mais coïncide davantage avec les variations biogéographiques de ces espèces. / Fossil remains of small mammals of the Leporidae family are abundant in numerous paleontological and archaeological deposits from the Quaternary. Many species are endemic to Western Europe, which makes them reliable markers of change in the ecosystems in which prehistoric human societies evolved. Paradoxically, morphological variability of leporids is still poorly understood and current phylogeny remains a subject of debate. This work focuses on the morphometric diversity of rabbits (Oryctolagus) and hares (Lepus) over nearly two million years of evolution. We applied osteometry and geometric morphometric analyzes to bone and dental remains of current populations and 73 fossil samples from perimediterranean regions (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal) during different moments of the Pleistocene. These data provide insights concerning Leporidae adaptations to environmental change as well as more general evolutionary trends. Here we propose a new phylogeny for the genus Oryctolagus and present different dispersion phases for Western Europe. Several population expansion events coupled with the recolonization of refuge areas and local extinctions are highlighted in response to global climate change. These results allow us to discuss the presence of these small game species in the environment and contribute to the debate concerning relations between leporids and human communities. Humans have regularly consumed leporids since at least the Middle Paleolithic. Their significant increase in the diet at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, however, cannot be explained solely by cognitive, cultural or economic changes but rather coincides with biogeographic variations of these species.

Cette thèse fait la lumière sur les différentes manières dont, historiquement, a été perçu, conçu et vécu le territoire, à travers l’expérience et l’essor de la mobilité. Cette étude montre le rôle crucial de l’automobilité dans le développement touristique du Québec et de l’Ontario et les manières dont elle a façonné certains de leurs territoires. La thèse reconstitue ces processus en examinant les différentes mesures adoptées pour mettre en tourisme ces territoires et les transformer sur le plan matériel comme symbolique, entre 1920 et 1967. Elle répond à la question suivante : en quoi et comment la mobilité associée à l’automobile transforme et crée les territoires touristiques? La période étudiée s’ouvre au moment où débute l’intervention gouvernementale en matière de tourisme et s’amorce l’aménagement d’infrastructures favorisant une plus grande automobilité. Elle se clôt sur les célébrations entourant le Centenaire du Canada et la tenue de l’Expo 1967 à Montréal, qui donnent lieu à un aménagement intense du territoire afin d’accommoder un nombre sans précédent de touristes motorisés en provenance des autres provinces canadiennes et des États-Unis. La thèse reconstitue d’abord le processus de mise en tourisme des territoires par la conception, la construction et la promotion du système routier, l’élaboration d’itinéraires et de circuits touristiques et le développement d’outils accompagnant le touriste dans sa mobilité. L’embellissement en tant qu’élément structurant de la transformation des territoires est ensuite examiné. Enfin, la publicité, les récits et les pratiques touristiques sont étudiés de manière détaillée afin d’identifier les mécanismes par lesquels se construisent les représentations des territoires par l’apport de différents acteurs. Cette thèse révèle ainsi les liens étroits et complexes qui se développent à partir des années 1920 entre l’automobilité, le tourisme et la modification des territoires. Elle contribue à mettre au jour l’historicité de certains réflexes et orientations qui ont encore cours dans l’industrie touristique canadienne soit ceux d’aborder son développement en fonction de l’accessibilité du territoire à l’automobile et du regard à travers le pare-brise. En montrant le rôle du système automobile dans l’expérience touristique, l’étude ajoute un élément nouveau à la compréhension de la démocratisation des loisirs. Souvent expliquée par la hausse du niveau de vie, du temps libre et de la généralisation des congés payés, cette démocratisation se trouve aussi favorisée par l’accessibilité à l’automobile qui, à son tour, rend accessible des territoires de plus en plus éloignés à des fins de loisirs. La dimension récréative de l’automobile permet d’expliquer son adoption rapide par les Nord-Américains et les Canadiens ainsi que la dépendance qu’ils ont progressivement développée à son égard. / This thesis explores the different ways in which territory has historically been perceived, conceived and practiced through the experience and growth of mobility. It shows the crucial role that "automobility" played for touristic development in Quebec and Ontario and the ways it shaped parts of their territory. The present study examines the different measures adopted to promote tourism in newly developed regions and to both physically and symbolically transform these regions between 1920 and 1967. The thesis answers the following question: how and in which way has automobility transformed and created tourist regions? The period under study opens with the beginning of government intervention in the tourism industry through the creation of automobile-related infrastructure. The thesis carries its examination through the celebrations organised around the 100th anniversary of Canada and Expo 67 in Montreal, an event which led to large-scale territorial development necessary to accommodate an unprecedented number of automobiles from across Canada and the United States. This thesis first reconstitutes the processes involved in the creation of tourist regions: the conception, construction and promotion of the highway system; the implementation of itineraries and tourist routes; and the creation of useful tools that tourists might bring on their journey. It next examines beautification as a structuring element within the transformation of territories. Finally, advertising, travelogues and tourism practices are studied in detail in order to identify the mechanisms through which various actors contributed to fashioning representations of territories. This thesis reveals the close and complex ties that bound automobility, tourism and territorial modification as they developed during the 1920s. It helps to shed light on the historicity of certain approaches and orientations that remain current in the Canadian tourism industry, such as territorial development in terms of car accessibility. By showing the role that automobility played within the tourist experience, the present study adds to the developing understanding of the democratization of leisure. Often explained through higher standards of living as well as through the rise of leisure time and the spread within the working world of paid vacation, this democratization can also be explained through the greater accessibility of automobility, which, in turn, provided greater access to regions located further and further from urban areas. The recreational dimension of automobiling that was put forward early on in its history explains its rapid adoption by Canadians and other North Americans, as well as the dependence on cars that progressively spread through a large portion of the population.

The paper explores the human-environment relationship in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. It argues that every impact on humans by the environment or by human-made objects is initially triggered by human actions. The paper questions humans' and objects' agency. Furthermore, the essay argues that the environment either helps or impedes the novel's characters, which according to the book, can be solved by collaboration.

This diploma thesis focuses on issues connected with music pollution, which has an impact on us whenever we are near noisy, disturbing and irritating music that we have to listen to involuntarily. We are exposed to this kind of noise on daily basis and we usually ignore the consequences it may bring. This thesis consists of two parts. The theoretical part describes the main characteristics, with made research and the most common forms of musical noise - musical coulisse, background music. The main source of information was my questionnaire filled in by 136 respondents. It presents a complex overview on this poorly analyzed and complicated issue as well as shows in which public places we are exposed to the music pollution frequently and how we perceive it. As the main result of my study I consider the finding that majority of people find a musical noise in public places disturbing. The most irritating places seem to be restaurants and waiting rooms. However some silent music is rather required in places like restaurants, coffee shops and waiting rooms. Younger generation prefers loud music in shops, in contrary to middle age respondents that would prefer silent music. People are usually not protecting themselves much against a musical noise. And if yes, they try to sort it out by negotiations - in...

Conservation in the EU and all over the world aims at reducing biodiversity loss which has become a great issue in the last decades. However, despite existing efforts, Earth is assumed to face a sixth mass extinction. One major challenge for conservation is to reconcile the targets with conflicting interests, e.g. for food production in intensively used agricultural landscapes. Agriculture is an example of a coupled human-environment system that is approached in this thesis with the help of mathematical models from two directions. Firstly, the ecological subsystem is considered to find processes relevant for the effect of habitat connectivity on population abundances. Modelling theory predicts that the species-specific growth parameters (intrinsic growth rate and carrying capacity) indicate whether dispersal has a positive or negative effect on the total population size at equilibrium (r-K relationship). We use laboratory experiments in combination with a system of ordinary differential equations and deliver the first empirical evidence for a negative effect of dispersal on the population size in line with this theory. The result is of particular relevance for the design of dispersal corridors or stepping stones which are meant to increase connectivity between habitats. These measures might not be effective for biological conservation. A second population model, consisting of two coupled Ricker maps with a mate-finding Allee effect, is analyzed in order to examine the effect of bistability due to the Allee effect in combination with overcompensation in a spatial system. The interplay can cause complex population dynamics including multiple coexisting attractors, long transients and sudden population collapses. Essential extinction teaches us that not only small populations are prone to extinction but chaotic dynamics can drive a population extinct in a short period of time as well. By a comprehensive model analysis, we find that dispersal can prevent essential extinction of a population. In the context of conservation that is: habitat connectivity can promote rescue effects to save a population that exhibits an Allee effect. The two findings of the first part of this thesis have contrasting implications for conservation which shows that universal recommendations regarding habitat connectivity are impossible without knowledge of the specific system. Secondly, a model for the socio-economic subsystem is presented. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are payments that compensate farmers for forgone profits on the condition that they improve the ecological state of the agricultural system. However, classical economic models that describe the cost-effectiveness of AES often do not take the social network of farmers into account. Numerical simulations of the socio-economic model presented in this thesis suggest that social norms can hinder farmers from scheme participation. Moreover, social norms lead to multistability in farmers’ land-use decision behaviour. Informational campaigns potentially decrease the threshold towards more long-term scheme participation and might be a good tool to complement compensation payments if social norms affect land-use decisions. Finally, a coupled human-environment system is analyzed. An integrated economicecological model is studied to investigate the cost-effectiveness of AES if the species of concern exhibits an Allee effect. A numerical model analysis indicates large trade-offs between agricultural production and persistence probability. Moreover, conservation success strongly depends on the initial population size, meaning that conservation is well advised to start before the species is threatened. Spatial aggregation of habitat can promote rescue effects, suggesting land-sparing solutions for conservation. In that case,agglomeration bonuses may serve to increase the effectiveness of AES. Possible causes for population declines are diverse and can be a combination of human influences, e.g. due to habitat degradation and inherent ecosystem properties. That complicates the task of conservation. The models presented in this thesis simplify complex systems in order to extract processes relevant for biological conservation. The analysis of spatial effects and dynamical model complexity, e.g. due to Allee effects or a nonlinear utility function, allows us improve the understanding of coupled human-environment systems.

Zahlungen für Ökosystemdienstleistungen (Payments for EcosystemServices, PES) sind in den letzten Jahren zum Aushängeschild von Umweltorganisation geworden. Der Gedanke, die Bereitstellung von Ökosystemdienstleistungen durch PES abzusichern, ist in praktischen Diskursen von Vermittlern zu finden, die an potentiell Zahlende gerichtet sind. Praktikern ist bisher jedoch schwer gefallen, zu zeigen, dass PES tatsächlich zu den vorgesehenen Zielen führen können. Forscher haben darauf hingewiesen, dass zahlreiche PES-Schemata, insbesondere diejenigen mit Bezug auf Wasser, auf unsicheren Annahmen beruhen und außerdem gewichtige Kausalzusammenhänge zwischen Eingriffen in die Landnutzung und Ökosystemdienstleistungen vermissen lassen. Diese Unsicherheit in PES-Schemata geht nicht nur aus praktischen Schwierigkeiten hervor, sondern aus der Komplexität von Mensch-Umwelt-Systemen (human-environment systems) und aus der Begrenztheit des Wissens über diese Systeme. Forscher sind zwar in derLage, diese wesentlichen Herausforderungen zu beschreiben und zu diskutieren. In der Fachliteratur mangelt es jedoch an empirischen Studien,die die zusätzliche Wirksamkeitvon PES-Schemata untersuchen, d.h. ob diese Schemata zusätzliche Wirkungen zeigen, die anderen Faktoren nicht zurechenbar sind, bzw. Studien, die die Bedeutung von Nachweisen für ihre Wirksamkeit für die Interessengruppen (stakeholders) untersuchen. Die Dissertation trägt dazu bei, diese empirische Lücke zu schließen: Dazu untersucht sie vier wasserbezogene Zahlungsschemata, hier auch Zahlungen für Wassereinzugsgebietsleistungen genannt, in Kolumbien. Sie vergleicht die vier Fälle hinsichtlich der Bestrebungen, durch Beobachtung (monitoring) und Evaluation Nachweise für die Wirksamkeit zu erbringen, sowie hinsichtlich der damit verbundenen Herausforderungen. Eines der Kapitel enthält auch drei Fallstudien aus Brasilien, die als Vergleich zu den Fällen aus Kolumbien und der Darstellung von Unterschieden und Gemeinsamkeiten dienen. / Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) have become the flagship of conservation organizations in recent years. The idea of securing ecosystem service (ES) provision through PES has been present in practical discourses of intermediaries directed at potential payers. However, demonstrating that PES can actually achieve the intended goals has been difficult for practitioners. Researchers have pointed out that many PES schemes, particularly water-related ones, are based on unreliable assumptions and lack strong causal links between land use interventions and ecosystem services. This uncertainty in PES schemes arises not only from practical difficulties, but from the complexity of human-environment systems (HES), and the limits of knowledge about them. Researchers have been able to describe and discuss these major challenges. However, the literature is still poor on empirical studies exploring the additionality of PES schemes, that is, if those schemes produce additional effects not attributable to other factors, as well as studies exploring the importance of impact evidence for stakeholders involved. This dissertation contributes to filling this empirical gap by exploring four water-related payments schemes (here also called payments for watershed services, PWS) in Colombia, comparing the cases in terms of their efforts to produce impact evidence through monitoring and evaluation, and their associated challenges. Three cases from Brazil are also included in one of the chapters and compared with the Colombian cases by illustrating differences and similarities.

Die weltweit steigende Nachfrage nach land-basierten Rohstoffen erhöht stetig den Druck auf Land und Landnutzung, vor allem in ressourcenreichen Frontierregionen. Eine gegenwärtige Erscheinungsform dessen stellen Transnationale Landnahmen dar, die den Landnutzungswandel vorantreiben und die landbasierte Lebensgrundlage insbesondere der ländlichen Bevölkerung in vielen Teilen der Welt massiv bedroht. Ziel dieser Doktorarbeit ist es, ein besseres Verständnis der komplexen Prozesse zu schaffen, die Landnahmen befördern. Erstens untersucht sie die rezente Konjunktur des Bananenanbaus in der Provinz Luang Namtha, Laos, die von Chinesischen Investoren getrieben wird. Zweitens zieht die Arbeit das telecoupling Konzept heran und unterzieht es einer kritischen Diskussion in Bezug auf seinen Mehrwert für die Analyse räumlich entkoppelter sozioökonomischer und ökologischer Wechselwirkungen. Eine mehrmonatige ethnographische Feldforschung und deren qualitative Analyse stellen die Grundlage dieser Arbeit dar. Ausgehend von zwei Bananenplantagen in einer kleinen ländlichen Gemeinde fokussiert die Arbeit die Mechanismen und Prozesse, die die Bananenexpansion befördern. Das telecoupling Konzept dient als Instrument, um zu analysieren, welchen Einfluss die multiplen und ko-konstitutiven Interaktionen auf den Vorstoß des Bananenanbaus haben. Darüber hinaus verdeutlichen die tiefgehenden lokalitätsbezogenen Analysen die verschiedenen Kontexte auf, die dieses Wechselspiel spezifisch lokal verorten und gestalten. Die Fallstudie zeigt auf, wie die räumlich entkoppelten Beziehungen durch ein grenzüberspannendes Netzwerk chinesischer Investoren mit sozialen Verbindungen in die Provinz hinein, sowie auf den (chinesischen) Obstmarkt vermittelt werden. Außerdem stellt die Studie heraus, dass die Strategien der Investoren zur Landgewinnung und der daraus resultierende verheerende Landnutzungswandel einer Entfremdung der Dorfbewohner_innen ‘vom Boden’ gleichkommen. Durch die empirische, methodologische sowie konzeptuelle Auseinandersetzung mit dem telecoupling Konzept verweist die Arbeit letztlich auf den Wert qualitativer Analysen für die schwer greifbaren, ‚immateriellen’ Interaktionen sowie mögliche Feedbackmechanismen, welche Landnutzungswandel in einer globalisierten Welt bestimmen. / The global demand for land resources has increased the pressures on land, especially in resource-rich frontier regions. Transnational land acquisitions constitute one of these pressures that currently shape land use change and threaten land access and land-based livelihoods in rural areas. This thesis contributes to create a better understanding of the complex processes involved in such land acquisitions in two ways. First, it examines a recent boom in banana cultivation in Luang Namtha Province, Lao PDR driven by Chinese investors leasing land from Lao farmers and exporting the bananas to China. Second, it critically engages with the emerging telecoupling framework proposed in Land System Science as an analytical framework for dealing with distal causal interactions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and using qualitative analyses, the thesis examines two plantations in a small village and traces the actors, mechanisms and processes driving the banana expansion. Using the telecoupling framework as a heuristic device, the study illuminates how multiple and co-constitutive economic, environmental, political and discursive interactions influence the banana expansion. Furthermore, the in-depth place-based analyses reveal how different contextual factors ground and shape these interactions in this particular location. In this case, the distal interactions are mediated through a cross-border network of Chinese investors with social ties in the local area, as well as in the fruit market in China. The study shows that the investors’ strategies to obtain access to the land combined with the resulting destructive land use conversion amount to an alienation of land from the villagers. By engaging empirically, methodologically and conceptually with the telecoupling framework, the thesis advances the discussion on telecoupling by demonstrating the value of qualitative analysis for capturing some of the more elusive and immaterial interactions, as well as potential feedbacks influencing land use change in a globalised world.

<p>The UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm 1972 has been recognized as bringing political attention to environmental problems. Researchers have acknowledged the importance of NGO activities during the conference, initiating a trend of engagement of NGOs in official global meetings. But NGOs were not permitted to speak at the plenary or participate in working groups in the official Conference. The influence of NGOs could still be substantial but in another arenas delivering perceptions, knowledge and information to the general public and officials, directly or through the intense media coverage of the conference. NGOs engaged in these parallel activities and individuals in the official initiating process are central to this research. </p><p>The purpose of this study is to analyze how Swedish NGOs and their related networks influenced environmental discourses during and following the UN conference on the human environment in Stockholm 1972. The purpose is also to analyze how they in turn were effected by the conference process and the context in which NGOs function. </p><p>This study is concerned with how social movements became engaged in official global meetings and the effects of this process. It is a study of the interrelations between intergovernmental discourse framing and activist influence. To understand this we take in consideration what motivated the actions of relevant actors, how actors selected strategies to obtain there purposes and how diverse frames of understanding emerged.</p>

There is an increasing concern for the impact of humans on the environment. Traditionally, ecological models consider human influence as a constant or linearly varying parameter, whereas socioeconomic models and frameworks tend to oversimplify the ecological system. But tackling complex environmental challenges faced by our societies requires interdisciplinary approaches due to the intricate feedbacks between the socioeconomic and ecological systems involved. Thus, models of social-ecological systems couple an ecological system with a socioeconomic system to investigate their interaction in the integrated dynamical system. We define this coupling formally and apply the social-ecological approach to three ecological cases. Indeed, we focus on eutrophication in shallow freshwater lakes, which is a well-known system showing bistability between a clear water state and a turbid polluted state. We also study a model accounting for an aquifer (water stock) and a model accounting for a biotic population exhibiting bistability through an Allee effect. The socioeconomic dynamics is driven by the incentive that agents feel to act in a desirable or undesirable way. This incentive can be represented by a difference in utility, or in payoff, between two strategies that each agent can adopt: agents can cooperate and act in an environment-friendly way, or they can defect and act in an ecologically undesirable way. The agents' motivation includes such factors as the economic cost of their choice, the concern they feel for the environment and conformism to the collective attitude of the human group. Thus, the incentive to cooperate responds to the state of the ecological system and to the agents' collective opinion, and this response can be linear, nonlinear and monotonic, or non-monotonic. When investigating the mathematical form of this response, we find that monotonic non-linear responses may result in additional equilibria, cycles and basins of attraction compared to the linear case. Non-monotonic responses, such as resignation effects, may produce much more complicated nullclines such as a closed nullcline and weaken our ability to anticipate the dynamics of a social-ecological system. Regarding the modelling of the socioeconomic subsystem, the replicator dynamics and the logit best-response dynamics are widely used mathematical formulations from evolutionary game theory. There seems to be little awareness about the impact of choosing one or the other. The replicator dynamics assumes that the socioeconomic subsystem is stationary when all agents adopt the same behaviour, whereas the best-response dynamics assumes that this situation is not stationary. The replicator dynamics has formal game theoretical foundations, whereas best-response dynamics comes from psychology. Recent experiments found that the best-response dynamics explains empirical data better. We find that the two dynamics can produce a different number of equilibria as well as differences in their stability. The replicator dynamics is a limit case of the logit best-response dynamics when agents have an infinite rationality. We show that even generic social-ecological models can show multistability. In many cases, multistability allows for counterintuitive equilibria to emerge, where ecological desirability and socioeconomic desirability are not correlated. This makes generic management recommendations difficult to find and several policies with and without socioeconomic impact should be considered. Even in cases where there is a unique equilibrium, it can lose stability and give rise to sustained oscillations. We can interpret these oscillations in a way similar to the cycles found in classical predator-prey systems. In the lake pollution social-ecological model for instance, the agents' defection increases the lake pollution, which makes agents feel concerned and convince the majority to cooperate. Then, the ecological concern decreases because the lake is not polluted and the incentive to cooperate plummets, so that it becomes more advantageous for the agents to defect again. We show that the oscillations obtained when using the replicator dynamics tend to produce a make-or-break dynamics, where a random perturbation could shift the system to either full cooperation or full defection depending on its timing along the cycle. Management measures may shift the location of the social-ecological system at equilibrium, but also make attractors appear or disappear in the phase plane or change the resilience of stable steady states. The resilience of equilibria relates to basins of attraction and is especially important in the face of potential regime shifts. Sources of uncertainty that should be taken into account for the management of social-ecological systems include multistability and the possibility of counterintuitive equilibria, the wide range of possible policy measures with or without socioeconomic interventions, and the behaviour of human collectives involved, which may be described by different dynamics. Yet, uncertainty coming from the collective behaviour of agents is mitigated if they do not give up or rely on the other agents' efforts, which allows modelling to better inform decision makers.

The UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm 1972 has been recognized as bringing political attention to environmental problems. Researchers have acknowledged the importance of NGO activities during the conference, initiating a trend of engagement of NGOs in official global meetings. But NGOs were not permitted to speak at the plenary or participate in working groups in the official Conference. The influence of NGOs could still be substantial but in another arenas delivering perceptions, knowledge and information to the general public and officials, directly or through the intense media coverage of the conference. NGOs engaged in these parallel activities and individuals in the official initiating process are central to this research. The purpose of this study is to analyze how Swedish NGOs and their related networks influenced environmental discourses during and following the UN conference on the human environment in Stockholm 1972. The purpose is also to analyze how they in turn were effected by the conference process and the context in which NGOs function. This study is concerned with how social movements became engaged in official global meetings and the effects of this process. It is a study of the interrelations between intergovernmental discourse framing and activist influence. To understand this we take in consideration what motivated the actions of relevant actors, how actors selected strategies to obtain there purposes and how diverse frames of understanding emerged.