Anthropization

Articles

• Geosystem
  23 May 2015, by C. V.-M.

  The geosystem is a concept enabling the analysis of dynamic combinations of biotic, abiotic and anthropic factors occurring within a «territory». It belongs to systemic approaches generally, and is used in geography to study interactions between the natural environment and societies, both temporal and spatial.
  It has considerable affinities with the ecosystem approach that developed in the 1930s in scientific ecology, which mainly concerned relationships between living species and their (...)

• Delta
  11 November 2013, by A. H.

  A delta is an accumulation formed by a river at its mouth. The alluvial deposits laid down by the river contribute to generating a delta formation extending over a variable distance into a body of water that may be the sea, a lake, a lagoon, or even another water course. The term delta, derived from the name of the Greek capital letter, in the form of a triangle, appears to have been used for the first time by Herodotus in the 5th century BC to refer to the triangular alluvial plain of the (...)

• Hydrosystem
  1 September 2010, by L.T.

  The term hydrosystem can be loosely defined as a system made up of water and the associated aquatic environments within a delimited geographical entity. This term, which has been in existence for some forty years, has considerably evolved in meaning. These changes can be approached from a thematic angle on the one hand, and from a spatial viewpoint on the other. For its thematic evolution, the term appeared at the start of the 1960s among English-language geo-morphologists. It was the (...)

• Biome
  3 March 2009, by F.A.

  The term biome, coined in the United States in the 1910 to 1920s following work by English-language ecologists (Carpenter, Forbes, Shelford, Clements), exemplifies an ecological trend that does not solely focus on knowledge of plant communities. Animal communities and their trophic relationships with plant communities (phyto-coenoses) are also taken into account in an "ecology of biotic successions". For Shelford (1931, in Acot, 1988) the biome has the status of a fundamental ecological (...)

• Morphogenetic system
  25 January 2006, by G. H.

  A whole formed by the combination of different erosion agents present in a place and playing a role in the genesis of landforms.
  The first term was defined by A. Cholley in 1938 in lectures, and in 1950 in Morphologie structurale et morphologie climatique, Annales de Géographie, the second by J. Tricart in 1962. They mark the first appearance of truly systemic reasoning in geography. The emergence of these two very closely related concepts in geomorphologic thinking was the result of the (...)

• Anthropization
  7 October 2005, by B. E.

  The idea of anthropization applies to any intervention by human societies that has an impact on natural elements. It generally concerns the action of man considered as an environmental agent. Whereas some limit the field covered by anthropization to the idea of degradation, others (P. Pinchemel) break down human intervention into appropriation, artificialization and development [the arrangement of space]: This ambivalence towards anthropic actions applies to the selection of cultivated (...)

• Earth
  22 December 2008, by B. E.

  For a single word in French and other Romance languages derived from the Latin "terra" (terre, etc), English has four, with a degree of overlap among meanings, both within English and with other languages such as French. "Earth", often with a capital letter, generally refers to the planet, but also to the soil in its non-technical aspects; it is also found in expressions like "down-to-earth". "Soil" refers mainly to the substrate used for agriculture, made up of matter that can be amended, (...)

• Renaturalisation
  4 June 2016, by P.P.

  This term is at present used in the spheres of urbanism, architecture and nature conservation. "Renaturalisation" (or ecological restoration when it is planned), is a process of modification of a portion of space, a built up area, a block, a quarter, a plot, a landscape or a territory, via the extension of occupation by natural elements – flora, fauna, surface water flows, morpho-dynamic activity etc. This mutation can, however take on different forms. It may concern a spontaneous (...)