Le journal de l'IRD
n° 46 September-October 2008
Translator: Nicholas Flay
Abstracts for the international issue
p. 3 News
p. 5 Partners
p. 6 Training
Satellite imagery
for water
management
The IRD, partner in agro-
Tam Dao workshops, Vietnam
ecology research
I
researchers are involved in four out of
12 programmes, running from 2005 to
2008 as part of the Développement
durable dans les systèmes de recherche
agricoles au Sud programme (Duras).
The IRD has been providing its expertise on
plant parasites and symbioses in joint projects to enable agricultural communities to
take on and conduct research in these
areas.
I
A new momentum
p. 12 Worlds
p. 12 Worlds
Climate change impact
on upwelling ecosystems
A close watch on Caribbean
coastal waters
p. 1/15 Interview
ndré Capron, chairman of the Inter-Academic Group for
Development (Groupe Inter-académique pour le développement,
GID), considers the scheme for creating a Mediterranean Science Area.
This ambition was formulated at a Paris conference involving 120 scientists and members of academies from 20 Mediterranean countries.
T
he Mexico earthquake of 1985
revealed the crucial role of the site
location on the size of the disaster. Highly
localized damage occurred 400 km from
the epicentre, at a place where the
geology and the particular geometry of
the site combined to amplify the earthquake waves.
Since that date, study and quantification
of the site effects have considerably
developed, to assess the degree of seismic hazard. Investigations now are based
on recording of vibrations in the local
environment produced by human activities (factories, road traffic, trains, pedestrians) or natural processes (wind, swell,
rivers). This passive method has some
indisputable advantages – low cost, simplicity and speed of data capture and processing, compared with standard procedures. Several recording campaigns for
surveys of ground characteristics and built
areas led IRD geophysicists and their partners to devise their own equipment,
which they named CityShark. These
portable recording stations are now on
the market, commercialized by the company Leas (Grenoble, France) and are
proving to be highly successful.
N
p. 3 News
© N.Jirakanjanakit
F
umerical description of insect wings
is entering the field of medical entomology. The wing has become the focus
area for direct analysis of venation whose
intricate network can divulge the insect’s
identity, geographical origin, even its
health. IRD researcher JeanPierre Dujardin is
working on this
geometric morphology technique. It could
become an innovatory alternative
method in medical entomology,
for identification,
exploration and
analysis, easy to
export throughout the globe.
© IRD/S. Fanchette
© DR
s part of
t h e
Bahias
campaign, researchers from IRD’s
Camélia unit,
in partnership
with the Environmental Research Centre at Cienfuegos
in Cuba, Unam (National Autonomous
University of Mexico) and UAM (Mexico
Metropolitan Autonomous University),
took a series of samples and made analyses
to determine the distribution of terrigenous
and anthropogenic input in coastal waters
and their impact on the functioning of
ecosystems of Mexico and Cuba.
Insect wings have their code...
Kenya’s Kayas on World
Heritage list
© NMK/O. Ashikoye
he upheavals that have occurred in
the world economy over the past
three decades have triggered a series of
changes that leaves no nation unaffected.
The combination of new measures of economic policy and more strongly driven
integration of countries into the global
economy has had some decisive effects on
the number and quality of jobs offered. It
has also had an impact on the modes and
conditions of employment of men and
women in the countries of the South.
Confronted with the complexity of these
issues, anthropologists and economists
draw on a wide range of approaches. The
mechanisms involved in the assignment of
working people to jobs bring a number of
factors into play – ethnic, religious, kinship,
clientelism, politics, etc. – that must be studied if the workings of the employment
market are to be better understood. It is
also important to place the subject of work
in relation to the plurality of surrounding
social contexts and to turn particular attention to the practices and representations of
the various players involved in this multidimensional field.
p. 15 Worlds
A
ortified villages situated on forestcovered hills, the kayas are sites
typical of Kenya’s coastal region. They
were built in the XVIth Century by
ancestors of the present-day Mijkenda
people. Work conducted jointly by the
IRD and the National Museums of
Kenya has helped to gain the inscription of three kayas in Rabai on Unesco’s World Heritage List. The research involved the
collection of clues as to the sites’ history and particular cultural significance in the common tradition the kayas symbolize. It is part of a broader comparative study of sacred natural sites, regarded in their social and historical context, in three countries of the western
Indian Ocean region (Kenya, Uganda and Madagascar), and financed as part of the
Corus 2 programme.
p. 11 Valorization
T
A
© G.M. Branch/UCT
n the coasts of South Africa, spiny lobsters
are fleeing oxygen-poor waters only to die
on the beaches. In Peru, anchovies move to seek
refuge in the surface layers, thereby becoming
more vulnerable to predators, fishermen included.
Although far apart geographically, these areas have
a feature in common. They are upwelling ecosystems, long bands of tropical coastal waters where
nutrient-loaded water from well up from the deep,
providing the basis of the rich and complex food
chain. An international conference, co-organized
by the IRD and held in June 2008, brought together 350 specialists of the world’s four major
upwelling ecosystems. The first review was made
of current knowledge on these areas and led to
identification of similarities and differences
between the different regions.
© IRD/R. Fichez
O
p. 16 Forum
Work and globalization
p. 2 News
Peruvian rock art
opens up
P
eru holds an abundance of rock-art
sites, present from the Pacific coastal
valleys to the Andean plateaux and across to
the Cordillera’s foothills on the Amazonian
side. In age they stretch from 10 000 years
B.C. to the arrival of the conquistadors in the
XVIth Century. Unlike the European and North
American sites which have already yielded a
wealth of information on the societies that
left them, the paintings and petroglyphs in
Peru are only just beginning to reveal their
meaning and significance.
© IRD/J.Guffroy
ood security, climate change, natural hazards, biodiversity – all major
issues and challenges in an intensely changing world. And IRD is
ready to tackle them.
Modernization of the Institute’s modes of operation was made essential by
the demands of maintaining a scientific production of excellence and integration of its programmes into a perspective for the future. Recent modifications to the national legislative framework have confirmed the IRD in its new drive.
Preparations are indeed being made for the future, by means of the revised configuration of our research organization’s forces. Such a redeployment, orchestrated by a site
policy now in operation for two years, is now being implemented in terms of both subject area and geographical area. A great deal of arbitration will have been required: in
metropolitan France with the creation of a France-Nord zone and a France-Sud zone,
in the French tropical overseas territories in consolidating certain installations and representations and, finally, abroad in relation to the designation of five broad regions.
The setting-up of a range of new operational instruments will favour synergies in all of
the geographical areas the Institute covers. Reinforced partnerships are forming with
universities and other players involved in research by means of multilateral agreements.
A desire to open IRD centres overseas to its partners is being put into practice through
the plan to use these centres as a basis for building up inter-establishment campuses.
The particular aim is to respond better to the expectations of the countries of the South
and ensure maximum effectiveness of working links between the sphere of training
and research and that of expertise and valorization.
Already an active operator in research, the IRD now sees its sphere of action greatly
expanded by its role as agency. Let’s wager that it will succeed in unifying the actions
of North and South to serve research for development.
© NSPO/distribution Spot image/Traitement CNES
© IRD
F
© IRD/S. Lagrée
Editorial
RD
© P. Houngnandan
S
cientists call on satellite imagery to
monitor the water requirements of
different crops at the scale of a particular
region.
Until recently, observation was hampered
by the limited spatial
resolution (kilometre
scale) and possible
frequency (monthly)
of the systems they
used. IRD researchers
recently made use of
08/12/2005
data yielded by a
Taiwanese satellite,
Formosat 2, which
came into operation
in 2004. This satellite
is able to make daily
observations of small
areas
of
around
500 km2 at a spatial
resolution of about
12/12/2005
8 metres. These data
gave a means of
studying two areas of
cultivation where farmers make extensive
use of irrigation, one
in the centre of Morocco, near Marrakech, the other in the
north-west of Mexico,
16/12/2005
in the state of Sonora.
n July 2008 the summer workshop of
the Fonds de solidarité prioritaire en
Sciences Sociales (FSP) (‘Social sciences priority solidarity fund’) was held at Tam Dao hill
station near Hanoi, for the second year running. It was organized by the Vietnam
Academy of Social Sciences and the French
Embassy in Vietnam, with the financial
backing of the IRD (Support and Training
Department) and the Agence Universitaire
de la Francophonie. The purpose was to
meet the FSP’s dual objective: promote
Franco-Vietnamese scientific cooperation
and reinforce Vietnam’s social sciences
research capabilities.
© IRD/JL
.Chatelai
n
p. 7/8/9/10 Special feature; the new site-oriented policy
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr
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