Dambo Farming In Zimbabwe: Water Management, Cropping and Soil Potentials for Smallholder Farming in the Wetlands

A conference paper on water management in Africa.Rising population pressures in Africa have caused the agricultural use of wetlands to become increasingly important. Developing large surface irrigation infrastructures, as Asia did during the sixties and seventies, often proves to be too costly for Africa. This makes wetlands, with their relatively good water availability and high soil fertility, an interesting alternative for increasing food production. Wetland use offers economic advantages as well. Farming on wetlands is a labor-intensive process, while surface irrigation is capital- intensive

Using the Wigner-Ibach Surmise to Analyze Terrace-Width Distributions: History, User's Guide, and Advances

A history is given of the applications of the simple expression generalized from the surmise by Wigner and also by Ibach to extract the strength of the interaction between steps on a vicinal surface, via the terrace width distribution (TWD). A concise guide for use with experiments and a summary of some recent extensions are provided.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, reformatted (with revtex) version of refereed paper for special issue of Applied Physics A entitled "From Surface Science to Device Physics", in honor of the retirements of Prof. H. Ibach and Prof. H. L\"ut

The Smallholder Farm as an Appropriate Water Management Unit in Wetland Development

Rising population pressures in Africa have caused the agricultural use of wetlands to become increasingly important. Developing large surface irrigation infrastructures, as Asia did during the sixties and seventies, often proves to be too costly for Africa. This makes wetlands, with their relatively good water availability and high soil fertility, an interesting alternative for increasing food production. Wetland use offers economic advantages as well. Farming on wetlands is a labor-intensive process, while surface irrigation is capital- intensive

Human activities have changed the shapes of river deltas

A model has been devised that quantitatively describes how the shape of a river delta is affected by sediments, tides and waves. It reveals that the area of delta land is increasing globally, as a result of human activities upstream.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Water Resource

Fathoming the hydrosphere (Henry Darcy Medal Lecture)

Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Securing the Harvest for the Smallholder Farmer in Rwanda: Fragmented or Consolidated Farmland Use?

The year 2007 marked the beginning of a journey to secure food in Rwanda. The country introduced the Crop Intensification Program (CIP), which promotes the farmland use consolidation (LUC). This study assesses the effect of farmland use changes on the agriculture production. We collected data at four research sites and considered three agriculture years to assess the effect of the fragmented or consolidated farmland use on the harvest. The study confirms that the CIP/LUC program converted perennial crops, mainly banana plantations, into seasonal crops, which were prioritized by the program. Overall, we conclude that the shift in farmland use has created an increase in both the harvest and monetary yields of the prioritized crops. However, within that general trend, we observe differences: farmers with smaller and/or fewer farm plots did not realize as great a yield increase as those who joined the CIP/LUC program with larger and/or multiple farm plots. While contributing to an understanding of the ongoing agriculture transformation program in Rwanda, this study followed a statistical approach that could be used by new studies assessing the benefits and outcomes of development policies

Polders

These lecture notes are part of the course entitled ‘Polders’ given in the academic year 2014-2015 by the Water Resources Section of the faculty of Civil Engineering, Delft University of Technology.Civil Engineering and GeosciencesHydraulic Engineerin