Small-Scale Irrigation Mapping (SSIM) as a tool for improving and validating irrigated area maps: contextual approach and lessons learnt in Burkina Faso

Recent rapid expansion of private small-scale irrigation provides an opportunity to improve livelihoods and food security, but requires knowledge of where it is happening, in order to sustainably manage water use. Concerns are rising regarding the negative impacts of unchecked expansion of irrigation on downstream water quality and availability, particularly when using sub-optimal practices (de Fraiture et al. 2014; Domenech and Ringler 2013; Shah 2007). Therefore, for informed planning of potential sustainable irrigation expansion, policy makers and resource managers at the national level are interested in maps of the current extent of small-scale irrigation. Although several maps of irrigated areas have been produced for Burkina Faso, these maps, often of 250 meter (m), 300 m or 1 kilometer (km) resolution, are of too low resolution to account for scattered irrigation on areas smaller than 1 hae. Small-scale irrigation in Burkina Faso is typically carried out on individual plots of less than a quarter of hectare, with a small proportion on groups of fields no larger than one hectare, implying that existing maps are not reliably capturing the true extent and distribution of small-scale irrigation in the country

Far infrared properties of the rare-earth scandate DyScO3

We present reflectance measurements in the infrared region on a single crystal the rare earth scandate DyScO3. Measurements performed between room temperature and 10 K allow to determine the frequency of the infrared-active phonons, never investigated experimentally, and to get information on their temperature dependence. A comparison with the phonon peak frequency resulting from ab-initio computations is also provided. We finally report detailed data on the frequency dependence of the complex refractive index of DyScO3 in the terahertz region, which is important in the analysis of terahertz measurements on thin films deposited on DyScO3

Text-mining and ontologies: new approaches to knowledge discovery of microbial diversity

Microbiology research has access to a very large amount of public information on the habitats of microorganisms. Many areas of microbiology research uses this information, primarily in biodiversity studies. However the habitat information is expressed in unstructured natural language form, which hinders its exploitation at large-scale. It is very common for similar habitats to be described by different terms, which makes them hard to compare automatically, e.g. intestine and gut. The use of a common reference to standardize these habitat descriptions as claimed by (Ivana et al., 2010) is a necessity. We propose the ontology called OntoBiotope that we have been developing since 2010. The OntoBiotope ontology is in a formal machine-readable representation that enables indexing of information as well as conceptualization and reasoning.Comment: 5 page

Effects of potassium/sodium fertilization and water availability on wood properties of Eucalyptus grandis trees

In Brazil. most Eucalyptus plantations are located in regions experiencing periods of water shortage where fertilizers such as potassium (K) are intensively used to achieve high productivity. Recently. sodium(, a) has also been considered a potential nutrient. As well as tree growth, wood properties are also an important factor to consider in order to measure the impacts of silvicultural practices and water deficit on forest productivity, since they are determinants for quality and yield of pulp and paper. In a split-plot experimental design with 4-year-old Eucalyptus grandis trees, located in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, we evaluate the effects or K and Na supply compared with a control treatment under two water supply regimes (37% throughfall reduction versus no throughfall reduction) on stem volume, heartwood proportion. basic density, fiber, and vessel properties. K and Na fertilization increased stem volume 2. 7 and 1.9 fold. respectively, with a nonsignificant effect of 37% throughfall reduction. Na fertilization was more detrimental to wood properties that K fertilization, affecting heartwood proportion, basic density, and fiber wall thickness. K fertilization affected only heartwood proportion and basic density. The 37% throughfall reduction only affected wood basic density. increasing it. Effects of fertilization treatments did not change regardless changes in water supply.Despite the detrimental effects of fertilizers (stronger with Na supply) in wood properties there is a large beneficial effect on stem volume (stronger with K supply), even under a water availability reduction, that would be compensates the loss of wood quality for pulp and paper production

La réception du chartreux Lansperge: survivance ou métamorphose de la Devotio Moderna

Publication originelle dans: Jan De Grauwe (réd.), Historia et spiritualitas Cartusiensis. Colloquii quarti internationalis Acta, Gandavi – Antverpiae – Brugis, 16-19 Sept. 1982, Destelbergen, 1983, p. 59-67.International audienc

Wood quality of eucalyptus plantation in Brazil

The area of eucalyptus plantations in Brazil is 4,3 million ha, as a result of the fiscal incentives policies implanted in the 60's. That significant area concentrated mainly in the states of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Bahia seeks to supply the demand of the Brazilian forest industries, with strong expansion to attend the national and international market. Actually, the possibility of a wood shortage in the next decade has been stimulating an inversion in the decreasing tendency in the annual reforestation rates. Also, investments have been applied to genetic improvement, nutrition, soil preparation and, recently, with the experimental practice of fertilization associated with the irrigation. For example, the Project Brazil Eucalyptus Potential Productivity, initiated in 2000, demonstrated that the eucalyptus clone plantation presents a mean productivity of 49 m³/ha/year applying the traditional technique, that includes the fertilization. Without the fertilization the wood productivity is reduced to 34 m³ ha-1 year. The introduction of the irrigation increase the wood productivity to 63 m³ ha-1 year and with the irrigation plus fertilization the productivity reaches 68 m³ ha-1 year, representing an increase of 38% in relation to the usual silvicultural practices. While the irrigation and fertilization treatments increase the eucalyptus trees growth rate considerably, the information on the effects on the wood properties are scarce. The knowledge of the wood property alterations due to the stimulus in the volumetric growth is essential to define the strategy for future research. According to the forest managers and wood technologists it is fundamental to consider the wood properties, even if the main objective is the increase of the wood volume of the eucalyptus trees on plantations. The lack of alterations in the wood characteristics, or even, the improvement of the quality for specific applications are considered desirable. This work has the aim to present the wood quality variation of the main eucalyptus tree species from fast-growing plantations established in Brazil. (Résumé d'auteur

Une petite histoire du mulet

Concerne e.p. la Suisse, le Valais

Recension de : Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs

Dans Revue de l'IFHA [En ligne