Land use/cover change from 1868 to 2000 in the north Ethiopian highlands: integration of satellite imagery and terrestrial photography

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Enjeux euro-méditerranéens

According to numerous official EU documents, the so-called Barcelona Process is a logical outcome of the coherence of the Mediterranean space. However, it quickly appears that this space is less coherent than uneven, fragmented, divided by incompatible interests, and torn by misunderstandings. So why does the EU portray the Mediterranean space as a coherent entity? This article explores this issue and tries to provide an answer in terms of strategy: by creating the “Euromed”, the EU allows itself to legitimate and to build a particular energetic and economic policy in a crucial area where international powers such as the US and China have high stakes.Cet article part d'une interrogation, elle-même née de la lecture des documents officiels structurant le "partenariat euro-méditerranéen" né à Barcelone en 1995. A en croire l'union Européenne, un tel partenariat avec l'ensemble des pays bordant la Méditerranée ne serait que l'aboutissement logique de la cohérence de cet espace. Pourtant, tant la lecture des réflexions d'intellectuels que celle de statistiques brutes semblent nous dépeindre une réalité de fractures, de différences, de divergences d'intérêts, d'incompréhensions - plutôt qu'un tableau cohérent. La question qui doit se poser est donc la suivante : pourquoi l'UE a-t-elle présenté la Méditerranée comme un espace cohérent ? S'agissait-il là d'une sorte de "speech act" performatif destiné à devenir vrai par sa croyance et sa pratique ? Se situant àun autre niveau d'analyse, cet article veut plus simplementéclairer le pur choix stratégique de l'Union Européenne. Créer un espace "Euromed" cohérent, c'est en définitive justifier et permettre la mise en place d'une certaine politique économique et énergétique

Gully cut- and- fill cycles as related to agromanagement : a historical curve number simulation in the Tigray Highlands

Gully cut-and-fill dynamics are often thought to be driven by climate and/or deforestation related to population pressure. However, in this case-study of nine representative catchments in the Northern Ethiopian Highlands, we find that neither climate changes nor deforestation can explain gully morphology changes over the twentieth century. Firstly, by using a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate historical catchment-wide curve numbers, we show that the landscape was already heavily degraded in the nineteenth and early twentieth century – a period with low population density. The mean catchment-wide curve number (> 80) one century ago was, under the regional climatic conditions, already resulting in considerable simulated historical runoff responses. Secondly, twentieth century land-cover and runoff coefficient changes were confronted with twentieth century changing gully morphologies. As the results show, large-scale land-cover changes and deforestation cannot explain the observed processes. The study therefore invokes interactions between authigenic factors, small-scale plot boundary changes, cropland management and sociopolitical forces to explain the gully cut processes. Finally, semi-structured interviews and sedistratigraphic analysis of three filled gullies confirm the dominant impact of (crop)land management (tillage, check dams in gullies and channel diversions) on gully cut-and-fill processes. Since agricultural land management – including land tenure and land distribution – has been commonly neglected in earlier related research, we argue therefore that it can be a very strong driver of twentieth century gully morphodynamics

Academic Print Practices in the Southern Netherlands: Allegory and Emblematics as Epistemic Tools

This chapter demonstrates that student life constituted an important source for the creation and circulation of printed images by considering a visual domain that flourished in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century: illustrated college notebooks. The well-preserved corpus presents an ambivalent relationship between knowledge and imagination. This essay focuses on the symbolic language applied to lecture notebooks, the usage of which was encouraged in similar academic practices such as Jesuit affixiones and thesis prints. It also addresses the materiality of prints and their manipulation by students. My hypothesis is that the sphere of learning was, via the printing world, bathed with Jesuit culture and visual language that perpetuated in higher education

Les thèses illustrées dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux à l'époque moderne : enjeux esthétiques, scientifiques et politiques (Séminaire du GEMCA, Louvain-la-Neuve, 30 janvier 2014)

À l’époque moderne, les étudiants devaient soutenir publiquement plusieurs thèses au terme de leur parcours académique. Ces joutes oratoires donnaient lieu à la publication sous forme d’affiches des conclusions défendues, parfois accompagnées de représentations de nature héraldique, mythologique, religieuse ou allégorique, destinées à glorifier les protecteurs des impétrants. L’objectif de mes recherches est de saisir les enjeux esthétiques, scientifiques et socio-politiques de ces gravures de thèses dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux