Projects
Whaleboats in the Forest: Subaltern Technologies of Transportation on Congo’s Inland Waterways KU Leuven
Congo’s wooden baleinières (Fr. whaleboats) are locally developed and crafted socio-technical assemblages that account for up to 50% of all transportation of goods and people on the waterways of the Congo Basin. Despite the vital role of these subaltern technologies of transportation for the livelihoods of millions, the socio-technical complexities responsible for their success have never been studied. Rooted in older boat building traditions ...
Reconstructing environmental change in the Lake Alaotra region, Madagascar KU Leuven
The extent to which the central highlands of Madagascar were once covered by forests and whether these were closed or more open forest types is still a matter of intense debate. Reconstructing past environments and disentangling the underlying drivers, e.g. natural climatic variations versus human impact, is a particularly complex task. Different types of archives exist which record information from the past (e.g. lake sediments, tree cores, ...
Reconstructing the biogeochemistry of tropical aquatic ecosystems using elemental and stable isotope tracers in freshwater bivalve shells KU Leuven
Aquatic ecosystems are vulnerable to changes in land use, climate, and nutrient inputs, as the material they transport is directly influenced by a range of catchment characteristics. This is particularly true for tropical systems which are under increasing stress and are sensitive early indicators of catchment modifications. However, long-term datasets on discharge or aquatic biogeochemistry are virtually non-existent. An elegant method to ...