At the level of France or of Brittany, landscapes management and protection cannot be undertaken without an identification of landscape units, as noted in the European Landscape Convention (2000). The present research proposes a descriptive approach of landscape, as an area visible on a territory, which characters can be studied on several scales. A state of art ofthe definition and the cartography of landscape units allows reviewing the different approaches, scientific or more usual, of landscapes delimitation, and then leads to propose a method which combines some automatic processing of a medium spatial resolution, per-pixel classification, with expert-knowledge, in order to produce a harmonized delimitation oflandscape sets at regional scale. A second methodology based on the “object-oriented” processing of high-resolution remote sensed data leads to the definition of landscape units at infradepartmental scale, on two different study areas (the Pays de Saint-Brieuc and the landscape group of Lanvaux moorland, in Brittany). It also leads to the renewed approach ofthe analysis of landscape unis boundaries: using buffers provide a quantitative typology of these boundaries, from straight crossing to landscape continuum. Finally, landscape analysis and cartographies produce in the first two parts of the research are applied to the actual question of greenways and blueways delimitation, in order to set up an eco-landscapeapproach; they can frame a first step in the characterization of ecological networks with the habitat approach, but also allows a finer delimitation of landscape valleys, in order to contribute to public policies
