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Yielding results. Recently a village chief in southern Zimbabwe offered Geography Assistant Professor Anthony Patt a plot of land and a hut so that he could carry out an experiment testing whether swapping seed with neighboring villages would increase crop yield. The CAS assistant professor of geography respectfully declined. However, research by Patt and his colleague Chiedza Gwata at the University of Zimbabwe may ultimately increase the yield of maize and other important food crops in the region.

Patt has just completed the second year of a multiyear study to better understand how to communicate important seasonal climate information to subsistence farmers in a way that they can trust, understand, and use. He believes that current forecasts, based on a better understanding of El Niño -- a disruption of the oceanic atmosphere in the tropical Pacific having important consequences in weather around the globe -- can help farmers increase yields by enabling them to choose crops better suited to the forecasted amounts of rain. In order to be effective, however, farmers must accept the information as trustworthy.

In meetings with farmers in four villages during the fall of 2000 and 2001, Patt took a significantly different approach from the local Agricultural Extension Service's attempts to influence planting decisions with simplified climate information. The researchers involved farmers in the process, asking about previous years' rainfall and growing conditions, traditional indicators of rainfall, and how and why choices were made to plant certain crops at particular times. They presented information about El Niño and its relationship to weather, and employed roulette-style illustrations to demonstrate concepts of probability to communicate how more complicated probabilistic climate forecasts operate. Finally they presented current forecasts and discussed possible strategies for using this information to produce better crop outcomes.

By the second year, farmers seemed enthusiastic about incorporating the forecasts into their decision-making. Patt attributes this to several factors: participation -- because they were able to ask questions, farmers were better able to understand the forecasts; repetition -- people understood complicated information better the second time, and repetition also enhanced the credibility and legitimacy of the messengers; and respecting local knowledge -- because the researchers included local practices in the discussion, they were able to foster a more meaningful dialogue. According to Patt, it is not yet possible to know if the enhanced communication process will actually lead to significant changes in farming practice. But, he states, "The forecast workshops are a rare opportunity for subsistence farmers to learn about their world, and to feel like important members of it. In a strictly utilitarian society, this may not have value in its own right. But for real people, these effects add both pleasure and dignity, and hence value, to life."

High-tech dowsing. In olden times New Englanders employed a forked stick to locate promising spots to site their wells. Modern day diviners, like Professor Farouk El-Baz, director of BU's Center for Remote Sensing, use highly sophisticated and powerful instruments, including satellite images, to locate potential new underground sources of water for people living in desert areas.

El-Baz is conducting a three-year research project for the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority aimed at locating new sources of groundwater to support the future needs of people in the northern United Arab Emirates -- including the Emirates of Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah, and Fujairah.

The researchers will examine images from the latest in a series of Landsat satellites, Earth-observation satellites initiated by NASA in 1972. Landsat 7, the most recent of the group, was launched in April 1999. It circles Earth at an average altitude of 438 miles, collecting and archiving approximately 250 images each day, creating a visual record that has been used for a wide range of studies from patterns of forestation and urban sprawl to changes in the Antarctic ice sheet.

By analyzing images of the desert from instruments that use various wavelengths of light, the scientists will be able to identify networks of fault traces in the highlands that may indicate fracture zones -- porous areas that potentially store groundwater. Satellite-based radar images will be used to locate the beds of former rivers and streams, now buried by sand, that served as channels of water transport and may contain groundwater in the substrate. Remote sensing data will be correlated with geologic, topographic, structural, drainage, and climate data to further pinpoint likely groundwater sites. These methodologies were previous tested and proven by the research team in Egypt and Oman.

El-Baz and his team will also train a group of U.A.E. nationals in remote sensing methodologies and fieldwork techniques to carry on the work after the project's initial three-year period.

"Research Briefs" is written by Joan Schwartz in the Office of the Provost. To read more about BU research, visit http://www.bu.edu/research.

30 November 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations