Écologie du paysage et écologie sensorielle : prendre en compte les pollutions lumineuses, sonores et olfactives dans les trames écologiques. De la connaissance à l’action

Within a few years, two sub-disciplines emerged within Ecology in the 1980s-1990s: landscape ecology and sensory ecology. Landscape ecology is concerned with the relationships between organisms and landscape configuration, and therefore with the flow of individuals and genes. The second examines the way in which organisms interact with their environment through the senses, and therefore focuses on information flows. Until now, the links between these two disciplines have received little scientific attention, and even less from an operational point of view. Yet the selection of habitats and the movements of animals directly mobilise their senses, such as sight, hearing and smell, to find their way in space, avoid predators or pursue a target. On this basis, it seems obvious that sensory ecology and landscape ecology have something to do with each other. The issue is all the more relevant in the current context, where human activities emit artificial light at night, noise or odours likely to interfere with natural sensory stimuli. The literature increasingly shows that these light, noise and odour pollution can degrade and fragment habitats. They can alter wildlife movements, distract animals, cause them to flee or lure them into traps. This knowledge raises the question of how to integrate this sensory dimension into the preservation and restoration of biodiversity. In particular, ‘Green infrastructure’ public policies, implemented by many countries around the world, and notably in France with the ‘Trame verte et bleue’, have focused mainly on sources of physical fragmentation until now. While artificial light at night began to be taken into account a few years ago in France, through a ‘Dark infrastructure’, we seem to be faced with a much wider problem: that of taking better account of the sensoriality of species in the preservation and restoration of ecological networks and in the related green infrastructure public policies. The aim of this thesis is to explore the links between landscape ecology and sensory ecology, to examine the impact of sensory pollution on biodiversity in greater depth and to provide some operational ideas. Above all, it is an invitation to engage in an interdisciplinary debate to ensure that sensory perception is given greater consideration, so that our actions in favour of biodiversity are not limited to the visible and tangible part of the world.