An hommage to Marthijn Sonneveld

When you write a PhD in the Netherlands, you not only get a supervisor, a well known professor who mostly has not time for you, but also two or three daily supervisors, younger scientists who are assistant professors. The great thing of this approach is that you get to work closely with people who have time for you. It does not come as a surprise that these people really influence your vision of the world and science.

At my PhD defense : Marthijn, Jan Huigen (the farmer who initiated my research project), me and Roel

Marthijn Sonneveld was one of my daily supervisor, next to Jetse Stoorvogel and Roel Jongeneel. He was probably the most silent one of all the three, nonetheless his understanding of soils and how they influence the landscape dynamics had a deep impact on my PhD. Not only he had great knowledge about Dutch soils, it formation and use, but he was passionate about teaching. He was not afraid to stand in the field and dig deep wholes to show concretely what he is talking about. Like no one else he was capable of explaining relationships of soils with the landscape as a whole in a easily understandable and yet fascinating way. I guess Marthijn taught me to appreciate and feel home in the openness of Dutch landscapes.

During on of the excursion with students in Friesland

Also Marthijn had a great network of stakeholders through out the whole of the Netherlands. He was one of the few scientists in my surroundings, who truly tied contact with Dutch non scientific partners to make science work for people out there in the landscape. I got a lot from his vision about involving a broad number of stakeholders to answer societal questions, something I try to keep doing in my daily work at ILRI.

Marthijn passed away before the end of the year 2013 after a short fight against cancer, leaving behind a young family. It left me, like many of my colleague speechless in front of powerlessness that we faced and filled me with a deep sorrow. I am glad and privileged that i got the chance to work with him and learn from him. He might have left us, but his ideas and visions will remain and evolve through us, students and colleagues who had the chance to interact and learn from him.

May his family and close friends get a lot of strength to overcome this difficult time and may he rest in peace.

The openness of Dutch landscapes

Scaling issues in art (Art Basel)

Crossing Basel today, was a pretty great experience, it is Art Basel.It is the big meeting of all artists and art lover. Part of the experience is a so called Parcours that leads through through the old military barrack, a place that is currently re-used as ateliers for artists. It was an amazing afternoon, discovering wonderful places, including a shop with home made ice cream or Ethiopian coffee. But is was mainly full of art.

One piece of art particularly attracted my attention : it tries to represent scaling issues. It is named "avalanche".

Avalanche at high scale

"The work Avalanche #2 by Evariste Richer is a floor piece consisting of 60 000 dice. The dice form an enlarged and pixelated image of an avalanche. The six nuances of grey correspond in this way to the six sides of a dice. A mimesis of a snow avalanche emerges from the ground through the methodic and fragile assembly of 60 000 dice.  

Spatial patterns in Avalanche

Avalanche (#2) addresses, through the shape of the dice, the contiguous relationship between the arbitrary game and the unpredictable course of a natural phenomenon. Through this work, the artist addresses the same landscape at different scales: from the overall perspective (a grisaille image through vibrant pointillism) to the detail (black dots on white background)."
Taken from here. 

Avalanche at low scale

Another piece that made me smile, are the shopping caddies full of plants reminding us of where our food comes from. It is not part of Art Basel, it is just there as part of a restaurant... some food for thoughts for people who have a break there...

just decoration?

some plant shopping?

Food for thoughts?

Look beyond rice : livelihoods in Ifugao region

In my previous blog posts on agriculture in the jungle and rice , we discovered that Ifugao people produce rice in the famous Banaue rice terraces to insure food security, as well as a set of rainfed vegetable which are sold and therefore are cash generating. Next to this, smallholders in the area have many different activities to insure the resilience of their livelihoods. Next to their houses they have a home garden with vegetables that can be irrigated when needed, such as cabbage, carrot or paksoi and another very common vegetable from the pumpkin family which name I could not memorize as well as fruits such as papaya. Also all the farms had in average about 20 chickens that run around freely. Both vegetables and the eggs are home consumed and sold. I have also seem many farmer keeping wild pigs for the pork meat. Fish and shells for the rice fields are mainly for home consumption.

Next to the houses one can also find nut trees, which red nuts are chewed with tobacco and shell powder. This combination has narcotic effects and is taken by almost all young people. The nuts are therefore for many people a significant source of income. 

the nut trees

The jungle also offers a whole range of benefits. The privately own forest seemed to my non-expert eyes pretty sustainably managed. Trees are cut mainly for building houses or for carving furniture and souvenirs for tourists.

The papaya trees around the houses

Off-farm options exist, mainly thank to tourism also offers a whole range of opportunities, young people become tour guides and some older wealthy people build guesthouses. Nonetheless, in the todays setting tourism only benefits a few and not really the community as a whole. An indirect effect is that the people who work in tourism will hire other smallholders to maintain their farms and harvest rice. A male daily laborer get about 500 pesos (12,5 dollars) a day for maintaining the terraces, female daily laborer get about 150 pesos a day for weeding. In comparison, a server/cleaner in a fast food chain in Manila makes about 300 pesos a day. So working on someone else’s rice field does not seem such a bad business, just very tiresome. 

I tried to understand how the community was organized, whether they had informal or formal institutions that would bind them to each other, but I could not find any, not even the Church. Definitely, I yet do not understand how these communities are organized. It is a pretty different setting that the one I am used to from Ethiopia, where smallholder live below the one dollar poverty line. I was pretty amazed to find smallholders who don’t do so bad, even without having a road.

Art to integrate communities and their landscape?

Lately, I have been collecting qualitative data from rural communities in Ethiopia. I have discovered that participatory mapping is an interesting way to bring the communities, scientists and local government together to discuss issues and strengthen to the relationship between the different stakeholder to their landscape (http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.com/2012/06/giving-rural-communities-voice-adapting.html). During my holidays in Switzerland I came across a not such a new concept, the landscape illumination projects by the Swiss artist Ueli Studer (http://www.studermelar.ch/)  and realized that art can catalyze in the developed world the same way the participatory mapping does in the developing world.

Ueli Studer is a Swiss artist who illuminates interesting human made or natural landscape structures during one night, mostly with candle light. 

Viniterra, illumination project on the Biel Lake Switzerland (picture taken from http://www.viniterra.ch/index.php?id=354)

His newest project is planned in Davos, Switzerland and I had a chance to follow him in his preliminary steps : identifying the landscape structures that are worth pointing out and that through illumination give a new perspective on the landscape of the spectator. 

Tot Alp in Davos : a  landscape shaped by tourism

A whole team, constituted of Ueli himself, my father, a geologist and a film maker who documents the “making of“ took off to the “Tot Alp”in Davos to study the geological structure of an Alp on which nothing grows due to the mineral concentration in the soil. 

The area is heavily used for tourism : it is reachable by cabins and half of the area has been flattened for the skiing routes and an artificial lake has been created as a water reservoir to create artificial snow. 

The artificial lake as water reservoir for artificial snow

Also different geological layer come together bringing white, black, red and green stones together, giving the feeling that one has just landed on Mars. The whole day was about understanding how the geological structures have emerged and which are worth illuminating. If the project takes place, it will involve the local government, the transport company that runs the different cabins in the area, the alpine club and the trekking guides of the area (locals) that would fix and light the candle, the tourism office that can promote an event and show the film of it to tourists. Finally, if possible the local population should be able to see the illumination from the valley bottom.

The geologist and the artist sitting in front of a clear geological cut

After this day, it is very unclear if the project will take place at the Tot Alp, mainly because no landscape structures that would show new insight could be identified, but also because it would be difficult to see the illumination from the valley. But with or without illumination, or with illumination on another location, a process to bring communities, stakeholders and scientists together around their landscape has started. 

Discussing the landscape

All previous illumination projects from Ueli such as Viniterra 1 and 2 (http://www.viniterra.ch/index.php?id=442) have brought stakeholders, communities, farmers, scientists, tourism office and government together. Indeed, setting the candle often requires the authorization of the land owner, which is usually a farmer and the government. Also many volunteers, usually the local population meets up to light the candles. Also, a broader public can see from far away or even walk through the illuminated landscape, admire the landscape in a new perspective and learn about its structures. The discussions linked to the illumination of the landscape brings people together that otherwise would have not met and therefore shape the network and resilience within these landscapes.

Human made nature? The story of Rieselfelder nature conservation area

During the Geostat meeting (http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-there-such-thing-as-free-lunch.html), an excursion to the Rieselfelder area a meadow bird conservation area near Muenster was organized. It is one of these areas where human have accidentally shaped a landscape that turned out to conserve nature. A nice example of how unexpected rural areas developments shape the current European rural landscape. 

The major and regulation pond

Rieselfelder used to be shaped by sewage farming. Beginning of the century, the waste water of Muenster were directed to Rieselfelder, where the waste water was used to fertilize the land. As the city of Muenster grew, more and more waste water was directed to the area and farming became impossible in the middle of the century. Only in the late seventies the city of Muenster put an waste water plant into operation. In the meantime, waste water continued flowing into the abandoned Rieselfelder area. The waste water laid there and create small ponds full of mud and prevented tree and shrubs to grow. The openness of the landscape and also the nutritious mud attracted many meadow birds who found there the peace for breeding and abundant food, in a time where these types of landscape disappeared from the European map. 

A smaller pond

Today, after several attempt to transform the Rieselfelder area into an industrial zone, it finally became a nature conservation area under the European bird directive. It is formed of several ponds with rids where meadow bird find the safety and silence to breed. The recycled water from the waste water plant flows into the biggest pond, that also serves as a reservoir. During the summer, the water from the reservoir is used to fill the other small ponds making sure that the area stays wet enough. The decreasing level of water in the reservoir during this period results in a bigger muddy zones, which insures that the meadow bird find sufficient food during the breeding time. 

The regulation point of the major pond/reservoir

The whole area has also been well planned for recreation and attracts the city dwellers who less than 10 km from the town center find a place to relax, without disturbing the breeding meadow birds. Also the biological field station offers children program so that every child regardless of her/his background can discover nature. The biological field station also maintains the area with some employees and many volunteers and collect data about meadow birds. 

It is an interesting story showing that the lack of urban planning has created an environment that on other location has disappeared and has become today one of the crucial nodes in Europe for migrating birds : a multifunctional landscape worth a visit and some thoughts about the human nature interaction.

More info can be found under http://www.rieselfelder-muenster.de/

Our very engaged and passionate guide

a blog in a blog in a blog : the landscape for people for food and for nature initiative

Recently a new initiative looking at landscape has been started. It aims fostering cross-sectoral dialogue, learning and action. http://landscapes.ecoagriculture.org/
They also have a blog where different people with different backgrounds report from different landscapes. Last Friday I reported from the Nile. Careful readers of my blog will recognize the story :

http://blog.ecoagriculture.org/2012/03/23/blue_nile_basin/