My thesis deals with the evolution of the relationships between large alpine lakes, watersheds, and society since the 1930s. By referring to the disciplineof geography, the topic was addressed through the following questions: How have pollutants that affect lakes also impacted related human activities? How have human activities been affected by the impacts of pollutions on the state of the lakes and where? How have the degradations and various pressures been revealed? What responses from society arose following these impacts ? How have actions been implemented to restore the quality of lakes?The study aims at answering all these questions based on a cross analysis of the evolution of the lacustrine social-ecological systems (SES), associated ecosystem services (ES) and pollutions. The operational perspective is to consider extending the current observation systems of great lakes to the territorial components they are associated to.For the longest time, the resources supplied by great alpine lakes have been associated with the functioning of human societies, which develop at their boundaries. This cohabitation occured for millennia without exerting major pressures on ecosystems as a whole. However, eutrophication, a generalized pollution of aquatic environments, emerged in the 1950s. Large lake / watershed / society relationships then became a major concern, thus requiring the establishment of a global management of water bodies and the coordination of political and scientific stakeholders, and human activities.Since the end of the 20th century, large lakes uses have been threatened by a series of micropollutions. Four societal challenges are at the core of aquatic ecosystem management issues: tourism, fisheries, water resource and biodiversity. These issues depend on the quality of the ecosystem and its natural resources, quality which can be preserved (Annecy) or recovered (Geneva lake, Bourget) owing to watershed pollution management actions. Carrying out these actions over the past 60 years have allowed to curb the degradation processes observed from the beginning of the 20th century, a period from which the flows transferred to the lakes from their watershed increased under the effects of urban, agricultural and industrial development.On the short term, new threats are arising (e.g. increased urbanization of watershed, micro-plastics, climate change, changes in uses and over-frequentation of lakes and coastlines). These worrying perspectives will engage a new debate that will lead to the mobilization of a large body of stakeholders, and ought to be anticipated and prepared by a feedback on the evolution of the lake – watershed – society relationships. Through this retrospective analysis, novel knowledge and models will emerge and will likely facilitate the dialogue between science and society and frame prospects.Our reflection is a contribution to the creation of a new approach to the geographical study of lake territories, mobilizing the concepts of ES and SES as tools that can help the sustainable and integrated management of large lakes. To achieve this goal, one of the most widely used models for characterizing ES (the cascade model, Haines-Young and Potschin 2010) has been adapted to the study of large alpine lakes, and a conceptual framework applied to the study of large lakes SES has been produced.On the scientific level, methodologies are proposed to make the concepts of SE and SSE applicable to retrospective approaches, and to take into account the specificities of lake ecosystems, thus responding to the shortcomings well identified in the literature. The strengths of this research are that it (1) proposes well-suited typologies to the characterization of the interactions between ecological and social processes, (2) defines the roles and limits of the ES involved in water and environment quality regulation in the provision of almost all of the lakes ES, (3) demonstrates that the evolution of practices and techniques of ES exploitation shape up the access to ES and must be considered in lake monitoring to management applications.From an operational point of view, the coupling of these two concepts allows us to characterize the driving processes of the Great Lakes / BV / society relationships and thereby to structure the response to pollution threats. These concepts then invite to define the limits of the system, and to question the current observatories for monitoring of large lakes, which are centered on biophysical indicators (bioindication and hydrochemical flows). According to us, theses observatories should evolve into a more systemic and integrative approach, which would be better suited to respond to challenges at the crossroads of global warming and micropollutants impacts, and to anticipate future societal changes.