In the context of changing agricultural policy, the development of agricultural production systems, increasing concern for agricultural sustainability and shifts in agricultural land management practice-related land-use change, the main objective of this thesis was to mine crop sequence patterns (CSP) and the relationships between CSP and the biophysical and socio-technical-economic conditions in mainland France from historical census data (e.g. land-cover survey, agricultural censuses, population census). Our study period 1992-2003 covers the implementation period of the 1992 European Union Common Agricultural Policy reform and Agenda 2000 in France. Both the classical statistical and data mining technique were applied in alone or combined ways in this thesis. First, we proposed an innovative approach to representing CSP within a given area and period at a large regional scale in a stationary way. The 2549 3-year crop sequences (CSs) were first identified as major CSs within all 430 agricultural districts (ADs) in mainland France during this period. Next, 21 clusters of ADs , four types of cropping systems, 90 representative ADs and three principal planting zones of cereals, oilseeds, and protein crops belonging to five clusters identified previously were further defined. We then explored CSP in a dynamic way by investigating CSP after grassland-to-cropland conversion, the temporal variability of CSP, and the evolution of the relationships between CSP and the external conditions over the study period. We conclude that the approaches developed here permit the representation of CSP at the large regional scale in both stationary and dynamic ways using time series land-cover data denoting specific agricultural cover types. The findings of this thesis contribute to improving the understanding of the process and pattern of human land management practices by agriculture affecting the terrestrial biosphere