Towards a pro-community-based water resource management system in Northwest Cameroon: practical evidence and lessons of best practices

This paper examines community-based water supply management (CBWSM) in three rural districts of Northwest Cameroon as well as a review of the literature focusing on some successful community-based natural resource management initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. Using empirical and secondary data collected through participatory research methods, it is argued that CBWSM has failed to achieve sustainable water supplies in Northwest Cameroon. Findings revealed that centralized control, the prevalence of poverty, passive involvement of public, private and grassroots community has continued to thwart water supplies within these districts. It is important to note that in any natural resource management system, power becomes a crucial factor as it determines who has and does not have access to common-pool resources. This paper argues that argues that strong traditional leadership, resolute devolution, and active participation of rural communities will facilitate and invigorate a platform for capturing the views of diverse user groups and this can bring about a people-centered and community-driven development process. Some aspects of best practice arising from successful case studies in Cameroon can contribute significantly to promoting the development of effective CBWSM in other rural communities with similar characteristics in and out of Cameroon. This will be possible only if rural groups are involved and engaged in the management of their resources while integrating some aspects of best practice.

     

A 520 year record of summer sunshine for the eastern European Alps based on stable carbon isotopes in larch tree rings

A 520-year stable carbon isotope chronology from tree ring cellulose in high altitude larch trees (Larix decidua Mill.), from the eastern European Alps, correlates more strongly with summer temperature than with summer sunshine hours. However, when instrumental records of temperature and sunshine diverge after AD1980, the tree ring time series does not follow warming summer temperatures but more closely tracks summer sunshine trends. When the tree ring stable carbon isotope record is used to reconstruct summer temperature the reconstruction is not robust. Reconstructed temperatures prior to the twentieth century are higher than regional instrumental records, and the evolution of temperature conflicts with other regional temperature reconstructions. It is concluded that sunshine is the dominant control on carbon isotope fractionation in these trees, via the influence of photosynthetic rate on the internal partial pressure of CO₂, and that high summer (July–August) sunshine hours is a suitable target for climate reconstruction. We thus present the first reconstruction of summer sunshine for the eastern Alps and compare it with the regional temperature evolution.     

Automatic optimized discovery, creation and processing of astronomical catalogs

We present the design of a novel way of handling astronomical catalogs in Astro-WISE in order to achieve the scalability required for the data produced by large scale surveys. A high level of automation and abstraction is achieved in order to facilitate interoperation with visualization software for interactive exploration. At the same time flexibility in processing is enhanced and data is shared implicitly between scientists. This is accomplished by using a data model that primarily stores how catalogs are derived; the contents of the catalogs are only created when necessary and stored only when beneficial for performance. Discovery of existing catalogs and creation of new catalogs is done through the same process by directly requesting the final set of sources (astronomical objects) and attributes (physical properties) that is required, for example from within visualization software. New catalogs are automatically created to provide attributes of sources for which no suitable existing catalogs can be found. These catalogs are defined to contain the new attributes on the largest set of sources the calculation of the attributes is applicable to, facilitating reuse for future data requests. Subsequently, only those parts of the catalogs that are required for the requested end product are actually processed, ensuring scalability. The presented mechanisms primarily determine which catalogs are created and what data has to be processed and stored: the actual processing and storage itself is left to existing functionality of the underlying information system.