Jérôme Gail­lardet, Pro­fes­sor of geo­chem­istry of the Earth’s sur­face process­es, Insti­tut de Physique du Globe de Paris.

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The Crit­i­cal Zone is the thin pel­li­cle of the Earth’s sur­face that hosts life and soci­eties. This is actu­al­ly the human’s habi­tat. Named after a recent sci­en­tif­ic ini­tia­tive com­ing from Earth sci­en­tists, the sci­ence of the crit­i­cal zone aims at recon­nect­ing dis­ci­plines of exper­i­men­tal and nat­ur­al sci­ences and mov­ing for­ward a more holis­tic approach. Crit­i­cal Zone sci­ence is place-based and uses net­works of instru­ment­ed field sites. The nat­ur­al objects mak­ing the crit­i­cal zone (soils, rivers, aquifers…) are also polit­i­cal enti­ties offer­ing a new per­spec­tive on how to invent a more sus­tain­able rela­tion­ship of humans with to the planet.

Arènes, A., Latour, B., & Gail­lardet, J. (2018). Giv­ing depth to the sur­face: An exer­cise in the Gaia-gra­phy of crit­i­cal zones. The Anthro­pocene Review, 5(2), 120–135.

Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (Eds.). (2020). Crit­i­cal zones: obser­va­to­ries for earth­ly pol­i­tics. MIT Press.