Travel
2010
August 25 - August
31
Uganda and Kenya. Project meeting with country teams from
Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. Meeting with ILRI staff on the sustainability of
livestock systems.
August 8 - August
13
Moscow, Russia. Mapping urban soils in the Moscow region
that is threatened by smoke and heat. Indeed, it was smokey but the field work
with PhD candidate Slava Vasenev and the beauty of Moscow made up for
it.
July 6 - July
23
Germany. If you look for a place with beautiful towns and
lakes (and very few Dutch tourists), Mecklenburg may be your destination. A few
days Potsdam and Berlin at the end was the icing on cake. What a great
city!
June 2 - June
9
Bozeman, Montana. Discovery of big skies through the Lewis
and Clark Marathon. You can't expect a marathon course to be much nicer
than this one. And... continued work with Roberto
Valdivia.
May 1 - May
3
Nairobi, Kenya. GTZ organized a meeting with all the GTZ
funded project teams dealing the adaptation to climate change in Africa. A good
opportunity to meet all the other teams and hear their
stories.
April 2 - April
4
Antwerp, Belgium. 100% fun. Wow, Antwerp is a beautifull
place to be!
March 23 - March
25
Lima, Peru. A very brief 48 hour trip to Peru to meet with
IFPRI and local staff on the wrap up of our joint project funded by the
challenge program on Water and Food.
March 2 - March
11
Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. Project meeting of the GTZ funded
project with partners from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Germany.
February 24 - February 27
Leon, Spain.
Graduation committee of Jose Alvarez Martínez: Monitoring and modelling
global change effects on landscape dynamics and functioning at several scales in
mountain regions. After spending time at the department and publishing a first
paper (others are on their way) he made it. Congratulations Dr!
January 31 - February
8
Bozeman, Montana. It is time for PhD candidate Roberto
Valdivia to finish his thesis. It is also time for our GTZ funded project on
climate change to make a step forward. Finally, there is the paper of Lieven
Claessens that finally has to be finished. Plenty of reasons to meet and get
things going.
2009
December 6 - December
13
Embu, Kenya. Postgraduate Course Land Dynamics: Getting to
the bottom of Mount Kenya: Analysis of land dynamics and sustainable development
in an interdisciplinary perspective. An excellent opportunity for our PhD
students to work on an interdisciplinary research theme dealing with the
extremely complex, mixed, semi-subsistence farming systems in
Kenya.
November 15 - November
24
Bozeman, Montana. Yes, we went skiing as well. But moreover,
we worked hard on the adaptation to climate change program.
August 5 - August
21
Pragraten, Austria. A new holiday destination (for us).
Great to visit the high mountains with the beautifull views on the gletschers.
Good for running as well!
July 28 - July
31
Settat, Morocco. Progress meeting on the ICARDA research
program. Can we relate soil degradation to economic develeopment? What
is the effect of various policy
interventions?
June 30 - July 5
Costa Rica. Visit to the
Corporación Bananera Nacional in Costa Rica to discuss progress on precision
agriculture and to explore possibilities for joint proposals. It is always good
to be back!
May 24 - May
28
Oujda, Morocco. In line with the previously visited program
in Yemen, now a visit to Oujda, where ICARDA has a second research site. A
recent Wageningen graduate (Amandine Pastor) will support the program to set up
a biophysical survey.
March 29 - April
1
Yemen. In a colaborate research effort with ICARDA
we are studying the interacting effects of economic development and
environmental impacts. We are approached by the program to help them collect
bio-physical data and apply the Tradeoff Analysis
Model. MSc student Caroline te Pas will study terrace
maintenance and soil fertility in the Yemeni highlands while local
researchers under the supervision of Mohamed Ahmed (ICARDA) will carry out
a survey on farm management. Never realized to find these intensively managed,
terraced agricultural systems in Yemen!
March 10 - March
12
Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.
Attending the Conference
on Integrated Assessment of Agriculture and Sustainable Development; Setting the
Agenda for Science and Policy (AgSAP 2009)
January 26 - February 6
Bozeman,
Montana. My Collaboration with Montana State University and the
International Potato Centre continues. Working on a paper on the
adaptation to climate change in East Africa, the further development of the
Tradeoff Analysis Model and supervising PhD candidate Roberto Valdivia.
December 6 - December
16
Mozambique. Competing claims around the Limpopo National
Park. The estbalishment of a transfrontier national park is great from a
conservation point of view. However, it leads to direct conflicts with the local
people living in the area, lage newly developed sugar cane planatations. During
a project workshop different disciplinary views were presented and discussed in
a broader context. In addition, I supervised with Eric Smaling PhD candidate
Armindo Cambule who is carrying out a digital soil mapping exercise in the
area.
October 27 - November 3
Guapiles, Costa
Rica. How can we improve the implementation of precision agriculture in
the Costa Rican banana system? A brief visit with PRI and BLGG. What are the prospects of new analytical
techniques? It may look like an ambiguous technical question, the reality
includes all kinds of institutional arrangements that make work even more
fascinating (and challenging).
October 19-26
Jordan.
Discover unknown territory. With family adventure and friends
from an earlier Morocco journey we travelled through Jordan. Starting in ancient
Jarash in the North of Jordan where ancient cultures have met since Roman times
and finishing at the red sea where Jordan meets Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
it was an unforgettable trip. How much a small country like Jordan can offer,
ranging from natural beauty of the magnificant sandstone formations (Petra and
Wadi Rum) and coral reefs in the red sea, to cultural history in Jarash and
Petra. An ideal holiday adventure for the entire family and opening a new view
on this Arab country that is often presented in a selective way in the western
news.
September 18 -
27
Nairobi Kenya. A new challenge is posed to us in the
development of widely applicable tools for policy analysis. Can we develop these
tools with a reduced complexity and apply them in cases where a minimum of data
are available? In Nairobi, we organized a training course for the simple tradeoff analysis tools that we
developed. Country teams from CIP and ICARDA headed projects participated in the training workshops.
July 23 - August 22
Guapiles,
Costa Rica. Fun, fun, and fun! Back to our second home town Guápiles. A
small banana town in the Northern Atlantic. We lived the life we used to live
(1991-1996). In addition, we played the happy tourist family (rafting,
snorkling, volcanoes, etc.) and spend great time with our old friends.
July 6 - 15
Concepcion, Chili. Pushing the PhD-student to the finish line through moral and
scientific support. Alejandra Mora Valleja aims to take the soil nutrient
depletion issue to the next level: from diagnosis to intervention. She finished
her first paper on digital soil mapping to map out the spatial variability in
soil conditions. In next papers she aims to link soil nutrient monitoring to
tradeoff analysis to identify the proper policy intervention. While back in her
home country she aims for finishing her PhD thesis before the end of the
year!
June 15 - 21
Juequetepeque watershed, Peru. Soil and water
erosion remains a threat to agriculture throughout the world. Numerous
conservation practices (e.g. terraces) have been developed but adoption remains
poor. In an IFPRI headed
project we aim to unravel the constraints behind adoption and see how we can
tackle the erosion problem in an innovative way. In this trip we made a first
acquaintance with the area.
April 20 -23
Leon, Spain. The
natural park "La Sierra de Los Ancares" in Leon province is part of a new UNESCO
biosphere reserve. The main question that remains is how management influences
land cover in the park. A Leon PhD student Jose-Manual Álvarez analyzes land
cover dynamics and the driving forces behind various interventions. Jointly we
developed a model for land cover dynamics to analyze alternative land cover
scenarios. In a field trip we looked together with MSc student Corinne Koot to
soil types as a driving factor of land cover changes.
March 30 - 31
Hamburg, Germany.
The Max-Planck-Institute for
Meteorology will develop a regional circulation model to assess climatic
changes in East Africa. This is a key starting point for our assessment of
climate vulnerability in the region.
January 25 - February
6
Bozeman, Montana. How can we reduce climate vulnerability of
poor farm households in East Africa? In a new GTZ funded project we will try to
answer this challenging question for Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya.(www.tradeoffs.montana.edu). In this first planning meeting we
developed a first research plan. In addition, the skiing in Big Sky is great in
this time of the year!