Domestic Morality, “Traditional Dogma”, and Christianity in a Rural Zambian Community

Hugo Hinfelaar described, for precolonial times, a comprehensive domestic religion and family spirituality which he called “traditional dogma” or “family dogma”. What is left of it in Zambia? When and for what purposes are traditional religious beliefs invoked today and scrutinised in marriage and the domestic sphere? While many say, “We have no culture left!” traditional dogma continues to function as a “moral grammar” that anchors cultural identity. The marital life of a couple becomes scrutinised along traditional beliefs during family crises. When people accept this scrutiny, they (re-)submit themselves under the wider family and thereby reconstitute the family under the traditional moral compass. On the one hand, Christian churches came with meticulous moral and sexual standards which were to replace traditional beliefs, while on the other hand, they belittled and bypassed the domestic self-regulating mechanisms that enforce morality, because they were linked to traditional beliefs. I am writing this paper from my perspective as a Catholic priest, who experiences, much like Hugo Hinfelaar did, that the void left by tradition has not been filled by the Christian faith. Hinfelaar’s concern for a creative dialogue between Christianity and traditional dogma still waits to be adopted

The Devil of the Missionary Church: The White Fathers and Catholic Evangelization in Zambia

This article examines how Western Catholic missionaries in Zambia dealt with claims of witchcraft and Satanism. Within an analytic frame that draws upon cultural history, theology, and anthropology the article also considers how African Christians appropriated missionary notions of the devil

Seeing Witchcraft

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay with them, reflect, and try to understand their meaning in view of the mysteries of life

Historical vintage descriptions from Luxembourg - an indicator for the climatic conditions in the past?

Verbal vintage descriptions in a historical wine chronicle (809-1904) of the Luxembourgish winegrowing region were assigned to five wine quality and three wine quantity classes. To calibrate models describing the impact of the seasonal heat consumption on wine quality and quantity, instrumental records from Luxembourg-City in a reference period (1854-1885) and the associated vintage quality and quantity classes were correlated. Dummy regression models showed, that in the reference period the wine quality classes assigned were significantly correlated with the annual modified heliothermic index values (representing the heat consumption) (R2adj.= 0.55, p = 0.0002); whereas, the incorporation of the wine quantity as additional predictor variable did not significantly improve model output. Based on linear correlations between annual thermal conditions and wine quality descriptions, average April-September temperatures were reconstructed for the period 1200-1904. Running averages calculated using LOESS smoothing showed that periods with cooler and warmer climatic conditions alternated in the past centuries. Even though a precise reconstruction of the annual temperature conditions solely based on vintage descriptions is not possible due to the broad set of potentially interfering effects, long-term climatic trends described in the literature such as the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Little Ice Age could be retrieved

Effects of soil sample pretreatments and standardised rewetting as interacted with sand classes on Vis-NIR predictions of clay and soil organic carbon

Numerous studies have examined the soil analytical potential of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy in the near infrared range, alone or combined with the visible range (Vis-NIR). Soil organic matter (SOM), soil organic carbon (SOC) and clay content are the most commonly and successfully predicted parameters, but predictions are quite variable due e.g. to the range of soil types covered by the calibrations. Especially organic matter predictions are also suggested to be influenced by for example soil moisture content and inclusion of the visible range in the calibration. Excess quartz sand is also suggested to have a negative influence. This study was undertaken to examine the effect of a selection of standardised sample pretreatment procedures, including rewetting, on predictions of clay and SOC content. A subset of 400 samples was selected from a dataset of 3000 Swedish agricultural soils to cover clay and organic matter contents without co-variation. The selected samples were analysed by NIR and Vis-NIR on air-dry samples, either carefully mixed to avoid stratification of particle size classes or shaken to promote separation, resulting in predominantly larger particles being analysed. Unshaken samples were also analysed immediately after standardised additional drying at 35°C for 12 hours and stepwise volumetric rewetting up to 30%. Shaking and additional drying had small negative effects on clay predictions, while drying only had small positive effects on SOC predictions. Volumetric rewetting to 20 or 30% before scanning reduced clay prediction errors by up to 15%, RMSEP reduced from 5.4 % clay to 4.5 % clay, and SOC prediction errors by up to 30%, from 0.9 % SOC to 0.6 % SOC, indicating that standardised rewetting should be considered. The mechanisms concerned could not be specifically identified, but known bands for water, hydroxyl and clay mineral-dependent absorption near 1400, 1900 and 2200 nm were involved in the improved clay calibrations and bands near 1700, 2000, 2300 and 2350 nm in the improved SOC calibrations. The SOC predictions were most inaccurate for soils with a high sand content. For these samples the average prediction error was more than twice as high as those for less sandy samples. Rewetting eliminated this bias, largely explaining the positive effects of rewetting

Quantitative Assessment of Desertification Using Landsat Data on a Regional Scale – A Case Study in the Ordos Plateau, China

Desertification is a serious threat to the ecological environment and social economy in our world and there is a pressing need to develop a reasonable and reproducible method to assess it at different scales. In this paper, the Ordos Plateau in China was selected as the research region and a quantitative method for desertification assessment was developed by using Landsat MSS and TM/ETM+ data on a regional scale. In this method, NDVI, MSDI and land surface albedo were selected as assessment indicators of desertification to represent land surface conditions from vegetation biomass, landscape pattern and micrometeorology. Based on considering the effects of vegetation type and time of images acquired on assessment indictors, assessing rule sets were built and a decision tree approach was used to assess desertification of Ordos Plateau in 1980, 1990 and 2000. The average overall accuracy of three periods was higher than 90%. The results showed that although some local places of Ordos Plateau experienced an expanding trend of desertification, the trend of desertification of Ordos Plateau was an overall decrease in from 1980 to 2000. By analyzing the causes of desertification processes, it was found that climate change could benefit for the reversion of desertification from 1980 to 1990 at a regional scale and human activities might explain the expansion of desertification in this period; however human conservation activities were the main driving factor that induced the reversion of desertification from 1990 to 2000

Can Infrared Spectroscopy Be Used to Measure Change in Potassium Nitrate Concentration as a Proxy for Soil Particle Movement?

Displacement of soil particles caused by erosion influences soil condition and fertility. To date, the cesium 137 isotope (137Cs) technique is most commonly used for soil particle tracing. However when large areas are considered, the expensive soil sampling and analysis present an obstacle. Infrared spectral measurements would provide a solution, however the small concentrations of the isotope do not influence the spectral signal sufficiently. Potassium (K) has similar electrical, chemical and physical properties as Cs. Our hypothesis is that it can be used as possible replacement in soil particle tracing. Soils differing in texture were sampled for the study. Laboratory soil chemical analyses and spectral sensitivity analyses were carried out to identify the wavelength range related to K concentration. Different concentrations of K fertilizer were added to soils with varying texture properties in order to establish spectral characteristics of the absorption feature associated with the element. Changes in position of absorption feature center were observed at wavelengths between 2,450 and 2,470 nm, depending on the amount of fertilizer applied. Other absorption feature parameters (absorption band depth, width and area) were also found to change with K concentration with coefficient of determination between 0.85 and 0.99. Tracing soil particles using K fertilizer and infrared spectral response is considered suitable for soils with sandy and sandy silt texture. It is a new approach that can potentially grow to a technique for rapid monitoring of soil particle movement over large areas

CEFLES2: the remote sensing component to quantify photosynthetic efficiency from the leaf to the region by measuring sun-induced fluorescence in the oxygen absorption bands

The CEFLES2 campaign during the Carbo Europe Regional Experiment Strategy was designed to provide simultaneous airborne measurements of solar induced fluorescence and CO2 fluxes. It was combined with extensive ground-based quantification of leaf- and canopy-level processes in support of ESA's Candidate Earth Explorer Mission of the "Fluorescence Explorer" (FLEX). The aim of this campaign was to test if fluorescence signal detected from an airborne platform can be used to improve estimates of plant mediated exchange on the mesoscale. Canopy fluorescence was quantified from four airborne platforms using a combination of novel sensors: (i) the prototype airborne sensor AirFLEX quantified fluorescence in the oxygen A and B bands, (ii) a hyperspectral spectrometer (ASD) measured reflectance along transects during 12 day courses, (iii) spatially high resolution georeferenced hyperspectral data cubes containing the whole optical spectrum and the thermal region were gathered with an AHS sensor, and (iv) the first employment of the high performance imaging spectrometer HYPER delivered spatially explicit and multi-temporal transects across the whole region. During three measurement periods in April, June and September 2007 structural, functional and radiometric characteristics of more than 20 different vegetation types in the Les Landes region, Southwest France, were extensively characterized on the ground. The campaign concept focussed especially on quantifying plant mediated exchange processes (photosynthetic electron transport, CO2 uptake, evapotranspiration) and fluorescence emission. The comparison between passive sun-induced fluorescence and active laser-induced fluorescence was performed on a corn canopy in the daily cycle and under desiccation stress. Both techniques show good agreement in detecting stress induced fluorescence change at the 760 nm band. On the large scale, airborne and ground-level measurements of fluorescence were compared on several vegetation types supporting the scaling of this novel remote sensing signal. The multi-scale design of the four airborne radiometric measurements along with extensive ground activities fosters a nested approach to quantify photosynthetic efficiency and gross primary productivity (GPP) from passive fluorescence