Sécurisation foncière, aménagement rural et production de bois. Etude cas et méthodologie Le cas de la ZGC d'Analalavaloha, Commune rurale d'Amparafaravola dans l'Ouest de l'Alaotra, Madagascar

Le Projet de Mise en Valeur et de Protection des Bassins Versants du Lac Alaotra (projet BV Lac) développe un volet sur la sécurisation foncière (à travers les outils développés par le PNF, programme national foncier) et la mise en valeur des terres agricoles dont le reboisement à des fins productives, bois de feu et d'œuvre) est importante. La présente étude se focalise sur le cas de la ZGC d'Analalavaloha (Commune d'Amparafaravola). L'objectif de cette étude est de comprendre les stratégies paysannes en termes de reboisement dans un contexte de politique de sécurisation foncière censée permettre des actions d'aménagement du territoire. Une enquête a été réalisée auprès de 19 agriculteurs en 2007, représentant la diversité des situations des propriétaires de cette zone, ainsi qu'une analyse paysagère qui a permis de faire des cartes pour illustrer les dynamiques de mises en valeur du territoire. Globalement, les parcelles de la zone sont mises en valeur (essentiellement par des plantations d'eucalyptus) bien qu'elles ne correspondent pas toujours au schéma d'aménagement. L'obtention d'un titre foncier n'apparait pas comme une condition indispensable à la mise en valeur. Le facteur stimulant les aménagements est plutôt l'intervention des techniciens qui jouent un rôle moteur auprès des agriculteurs cherchant à valoriser au mieux leurs terres. Le projet BV Lac doit continuer à s'appuyer sur les ZGC pour penser l'aménagement territorial. La production de bois de feu, principale et le plus souvent unique source d'énergie en milieu rural, et la production de bois d'œuvre (perches) constituent ainsi des sources de revenus complémentaires importantes dans un contexte de foncier souvent saturé ou les terres prédisposées à la culture ne sont plus disponibles

La sécurisation foncière favorise-t-elle l'aménagement rural ? Le cas de la ZGC d'Analalavaloha, Commune rurale d'Amparafaravola dans l'Ouest de l'Alaotra, Madagascar

Le Projet de Mise en Valeur et de Protection des Bassins Versants du Lac Alaotra à Madagascar (projet BV Lac) propose d'étudier les liens entre la sécurisation foncière et la mise en valeur des terres agricoles sur le cas de la ZGC d'Analalavaloha (Commune d'Amparafaravola) avec pour objectif de répondre au postulat " la sécurisation foncière est le point initial des actions d'aménagement du territoire ". Une enquête auprès de 19 agriculteurs a été réalisée ainsi qu'une analyse paysagère débouchant sur une cartographie pour illustrer les dynamiques de mises en valeur du territoire. L'obtention d'un titre foncier n'apparait pas comme une condition indispensable à la mise en valeur. Le facteur stimulant les aménagements est plutôt l'intervention des techniciens qui jouent un rôle moteur auprès des agriculteurs cherchant à valoriser au mieux leurs terres. Le thème de la sécurisation foncière nécessite une évaluation plus formelle dans un futur proche, lorsque ses effets seront plus perceptibles

VIS: the visible imager for Euclid

Euclid-VIS is a large format visible imager for the ESA Euclid space mission in their Cosmic Vision program, scheduled for launch in 2019. Together with the near infrared imaging within the NISP instrument it forms the basis of the weak lensing measurements of Euclid. VIS will image in a single r+i+z band from 550-900 nm over a field of view of ~0.5 deg2. By combining 4 exposures with a total of 2240 sec, VIS will reach to V=24.5 (10{\sigma}) for sources with extent ~0.3 arcsec. The image sampling is 0.1 arcsec. VIS will provide deep imaging with a tightly controlled and stable point spread function (PSF) over a wide survey area of 15000 deg2 to measure the cosmic shear from nearly 1.5 billion galaxies to high levels of accuracy, from which the cosmological parameters will be measured. In addition, VIS will also provide a legacy imaging dataset with an unprecedented combination of spatial resolution, depth and area covering most of the extra-Galactic sky. Here we will present the results of the study carried out by the Euclid Consortium during the Euclid Definition phase.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Evidence of triggered star formation in G327.3-0.6. Dust-continuum mapping of an infrared dark cloud with P-ArT\'eMiS

Aims. Expanding HII regions and propagating shocks are common in the environment of young high-mass star-forming complexes. They can compress a pre-existing molecular cloud and trigger the formation of dense cores. We investigate whether these phenomena can explain the formation of high-mass protostars within an infrared dark cloud located at the position of G327.3-0.6 in the Galactic plane, in between two large infrared bubbles and two HII regions. Methods: The region of G327.3-0.6 was imaged at 450 ? m with the CEA P-ArT\'eMiS bolometer array on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope in Chile. APEX/LABOCA and APEX-2A, and Spitzer/IRAC and MIPS archives data were used in this study. Results: Ten massive cores were detected in the P-ArT\'eMiS image, embedded within the infrared dark cloud seen in absorption at both 8 and 24 ?m. Their luminosities and masses indicate that they form high-mass stars. The kinematical study of the region suggests that the infrared bubbles expand toward the infrared dark cloud. Conclusions: Under the influence of expanding bubbles, star formation occurs in the infrared dark areas at the border of HII regions and infrared bubbles.Comment: 4 page

The COSPIX mission: focusing on the energetic and obscured Universe

Tracing the formation and evolution of all supermassive black holes, including the obscured ones, understanding how black holes influence their surroundings and how matter behaves under extreme conditions, are recognized as key science objectives to be addressed by the next generation of instruments. These are the main goals of the COSPIX proposal, made to ESA in December 2010 in the context of its call for selection of the M3 mission. In addition, COSPIX, will also provide key measurements on the non thermal Universe, particularly in relation to the question of the acceleration of particles, as well as on many other fundamental questions as for example the energetic particle content of clusters of galaxies. COSPIX is proposed as an observatory operating from 0.3 to more than 100 keV. The payload features a single long focal length focusing telescope offering an effective area close to ten times larger than any scheduled focusing mission at 30 keV, an angular resolution better than 20 arcseconds in hard X-rays, and polarimetric capabilities within the same focal plane instrumentation. In this paper, we describe the science objectives of the mission, its baseline design, and its performances, as proposed to ESA.Comment: 7 pages, accepted for publication in Proceedings of Science, for the 25th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics (eds. F. Rieger & C. van Eldik), PoS(Texas 2010)25

Probing the structure of a massive filament: ArTéMiS 350 and 450 μm mapping of the integral-shaped filament in Orion A

Context. The Orion molecular cloud is the closest region of high-mass star formation. It is an ideal target for investigating the detailed structure of massive star-forming filaments at high resolution and the relevance of the filament paradigm for the earliest stages of intermediate- to high-mass star formation. Aims. Within the Orion A molecular cloud, the integral-shaped filament (ISF) is a prominent, degree-long structure of dense gas and dust with clear signs of recent and ongoing high-mass star formation. Our aim is to characterise the structure of this massive filament at moderately high angular resolution (8′′ or ~0.016 pc) in order to measure the intrinsic width of the main filament, down to scales well below 0.1 pc, which has been identified as the characteristic width of filaments. Methods. We used the ArTéMiS bolometer camera at APEX to map a ~0.6 × 0.2 deg2 region covering OMC-1, OMC-2, and OMC-3 at 350 and 450 μm. We combined these data with Herschel-SPIRE maps to recover extended emission. The combined Herschel-ArTéMiS maps provide details on the distribution of dense cold material, with a high spatial dynamic range, from our 8′′ resolution up to the transverse angular size of the map, ~10-15′. By combining Herschel and ArTéMiS data at 160, 250, 350, and 450 μm, we constructed high-resolution temperature and H2 column density maps. We extracted radial intensity profiles from the column density map in several representative portions of the ISF, which we fitted with Gaussian and Plummer models to derive their intrinsic widths. We also compared the distribution of material traced by ArTéMiS with that seen in the higher-density tracer N2H+(1-0) that was recently observed with the ALMA interferometer. Results. All the radial profiles that we extracted show a clear deviation from a Gaussian, with evidence for an inner plateau that had not previously been seen clearly using Herschel-only data. We measure intrinsic half-power widths in the range 0.06-0.11 pc. This is significantly larger than the Gaussian widths measured for fibres seen in N2H+, which probably only traces the dense innermost regions of the large-scale filament. These half-power widths are within a factor of two of the value of ~0.1 pc found for a large sample of nearby filaments in various low-mass star-forming regions, which tends to indicate that the physical conditions governing the fragmentation of pre-stellar cores within transcritical or supercritical filaments are the same over a large range of masses per unit length. © F. Schuller et al. 2021

The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) on the Herschel Space Observatory

The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) is one of the three science instruments on ESA's far infrared and submillimetre observatory. It employs two Ge:Ga photoconductor arrays (stressed and unstressed) with 16x25 pixels, each, and two filled silicon bolometer arrays with 16x32 and 32x64 pixels, respectively, to perform integral-field spectroscopy and imaging photometry in the 60-210\mu\ m wavelength regime. In photometry mode, it simultaneously images two bands, 60-85\mu\ m or 85-125\mu\m and 125-210\mu\ m, over a field of view of ~1.75'x3.5', with close to Nyquist beam sampling in each band. In spectroscopy mode, it images a field of 47"x47", resolved into 5x5 pixels, with an instantaneous spectral coverage of ~1500km/s and a spectral resolution of ~175km/s. We summarise the design of the instrument, describe observing modes, calibration, and data analysis methods, and present our current assessment of the in-orbit performance of the instrument based on the Performance Verification tests. PACS is fully operational, and the achieved performance is close to or better than the pre-launch predictions

VIS: the visible imager for Euclid

Euclid-VIS is the large format visible imager for the ESA Euclid space mission in their Cosmic Vision program, scheduled for launch in 2020. Together with the near infrared imaging within the NISP instrument, it forms the basis of the weak lensing measurements of Euclid. VIS will image in a single r+i+z band from 550-900 nm over a field of view of ~0.5 deg2. By combining 4 exposures with a total of 2260 sec, VIS will reach to V=24.5 (10σ) for sources with extent ~0.3 arcsec. The image sampling is 0.1 arcsec. VIS will provide deep imaging with a tightly controlled and stable point spread function (PSF) over a wide survey area of 15000 deg2 to measure the cosmic shear from nearly 1.5 billion galaxies to high levels of accuracy, from which the cosmological parameters will be measured. In addition, VIS will also provide a legacy dataset with an unprecedented combination of spatial resolution, depth and area covering most of the extra-Galactic sky. Here we will present the results of the study carried out by the Euclid Consortium during the period up to the Preliminary Design Review. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

Pilot optical alignment

PILOT (Polarized Instrument for Long wavelength Observations of the Tenuous interstellar medium) is a balloonborne astronomy experiment designed to study the polarization of dust emission in the diffuse interstellar medium in our Galaxy. The PILOT instrument allows observations at wavelengths 240 μm and 550 μm with an angular resolution of about two arcminutes. The observations performed during the two first flights performed from Timmins, Ontario Canada, and from Alice-springs, Australia, respectively in September 2015 and in April 2017 have demonstrated the good performances of the instrument. Pilot optics is composed of an off axis Gregorian type telescope combined with a refractive re-imager system. All optical elements, except the primary mirror, which is at ambient temperature, are inside a cryostat and cooled down to 3K. The whole optical system is aligned on ground at room temperature using dedicated means and procedures in order to keep the tight requirements on the focus position and ensure the instrument optical performances during the various phases of a flight. We’ll present the optical performances and the firsts results obtained during the two first flight campaigns. The talk describes the system analysis, the alignment methods, and finally the inflight performances