Interdisciplinary Approaches

This blog has focused most of its attention on the issue of inefficient water use within agriculture and then the solutions to this problem (with more solutions still to be talked about) but in this short blog post I want to talk about a reading I did for the first lecture in this course.

The reading in question was by Villholth (2013) and talks about groundwater irrigation for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and how the use of groundwater for irrigation is growing in extent and importance. It is an incredibly insightful paper reflecting the importance of groundwater resources in the African continent and is good because it focuses on small scale farmers rather than large irrigation schemes.

Among the information I took from this paper was the importance of integrating socio-economic approaches into hydrogeological studies. In other words, bridging the gap between human and physical geography. Often studies into water use in Africa focus on the physical conditions (aquifer recharge, groundwater storage, climatic conditions) or human conditions (urbanization, household composition) and Villholth combines the two successfully to create a robust synthesis of groundwater use within small scale agriculture.
I think it is important (and logical) to combine both human and physical approaches within research into this area because in Africa the natural and the anthropogenic word are so closely interlinked it is often difficult to look at just one. To look at one in isolation limits your ability to pull robust conclusions from a piece of research. Of course, the context and objectives of your research determine your ability to incorporate both human and physical factors.