Fieldtrip to France: MSc students conduct interdisciplinary research
Today’s complex and interconnected water challenges are best tackled with interdisciplinary approaches. That’s why IHE Delft MSc students work in an interdisciplinary manner throughout their education. This month, students honed their collaborative skills through fieldwork in France, where they used diverse perspectives to take on problems such as coastal erosion, floods and water pricing.
A bit more than half-way through their intensive one-year MSc in Water and Sustainable Development, 137 students, accompanied by another 30 students from the joint MSc Programmes IMETE and Limnology and Wetland Management traveled from Delft to France for an immersive two-week interdisciplinary project.
In groups of around eight, they focused on water issues in four project sites in south-eastern France: Grenoble, Digne-les-Bains, Montpellier and the Camargue.
Coastal erosion hotspots in the Camargue
The Camargue, a regional natural park in the Rhone river delta at the Mediterranean Sea, features an internationally important wetland that is under pressure from the effects of climate change.
The rising sea level has led to issues such as salt intrusion and coastal erosion, and floods threaten to isolate coastal towns. Here, IHE Delft students looked at trade-offs between economic activities and the park’s ecosystem, the hypothetical case of a coastal town in the park of becoming an island due to floods, and coastal management scenarios.
Abdulla Hussain Rasheed of the Maldives, part of a student group that worked on a long-term coastal management strategy for the Camargue, said he and his peers first looked at the coastline evolution over the past 20 years and identified coastal erosion hotspots areas in need of protection.
They then modelled how an area would respond to flood waves of the magnitude expected once every three years, and developed a flood map that identified areas that could be flooded in extreme water levels projected to occur once every 100 years. They made both analyses for the year 2100 under a worst-case climate change scenario.
“In such an extreme weather event, the higher water level would lead to extensive damage to society, economy and ecology,” he said.
His group also assessed the existing wetland ecosystem along the coast to gauge the effect of climate change by comparing flood maps with maps showing the distribution of ecological habitats.
The group then came up with potential measures to manage the projected impacts for various critical zones along the coastline. They made a timeline that shows when the measures, including beach nourishment, dike rehabilitation and wetland restoration, are expected to be most effective. “This can be used as a guide to formulate policies and prioritise investment,” he said.
Urban water issues in Montpellier
In Montpellier, a Mediterranean city with a metropolitan area of over 800.000 inhabitants, students focused on urban water issues such as flood risks, a new water tariffs system established by the recently re-municipalized water utility and wastewater reuse. One of the student groups looked at wastewater reuse as an option to reduce water scarcity, and identified the potential, limitations, drawbacks and trade-offs for different uses of treated wastewater.
Another group investigated the relation between the Lez river and the green spaces of the city’s Aubes neighbourhood, which serve both as urban farming areas and recreational spaces.
Interdisciplinarity is key to a holistic view of the links between urban vegetation and hydrology, said Adam Mucyaba, an MSc student from Rwanda: “I am a civil engineer in a group with an agricultural engineer, and social and environmental scientists. While I bring in an engineering perspective by looking at space allocation and flood mitigation, others look at aspects such as the productivity of urban farming, water policies and stakeholder dynamics.”
It is interesting to see that some dynamics here are similar to what we face in Rwanda.
The group interviewed local practitioners to learn about their practical perspectives and the local French context.
“It is interesting to see that some dynamics here are similar to what we face in Rwanda,” Adam Mucyaba said. “For instance, we interviewed the president of a local association of water users. He told us that their specific local needs at times conflict with national water policies because the national top down policies are too general as they are made for the scale of the whole country. This sometimes creates tension, which I see also happen back in our region.”
At the Montpellier project site, IHE Delft collaborated extensively with AgroParisTech, a renowned French organization of which the Montpellier campus is specializing in research and education on water, tropical ecosystems and geoinformation. AgroParisTech offered workspaces for students, arranged various lectures, and coordinated and participated in the majority of the excursions.
The collaboration is very rewarding on both sides, said Flavie Cernesson, professor of hydrologic engineering at AgroParisTech. “We have been working together with IHE Delft for some years now and recently we signed an MoU to formalize our collaboration in staff and student exchange and conducting fieldwork like this. We are now preparing a similar visit from our students to the Netherlands.”
Skills development
Before the project the students took part in a skills development week during which they learned different data gathering techniques such as flow measurements, sediment sampling, interview methods and working with remote sensing tools such as drones and satellite data.
Fawzia Tarannum from India did her skills development at L’institut Agro in Montpellier.
“We started with practical sessions related to flow measurements in the laboratory. Later on, we conducted field experiments on irrigation performance and real time measurement of soil moisture, infiltration rate and the flow in the canals. We also participated in a game to develop a strategy to operate the gates of the irrigation canals ensuring equitable distribution of water supply to farmers,” she said.
For Fawzia Tarannum, an experienced water professional who already holds a PhD in Community Participation in Water Quality Management, it was the first time irrigating a field by herself.
This whole experience, including skills development and the interdisciplinary group project, is a perfect complement to what we have learned in our earlier modules.
Her group worked on finding a way for agricultural activities to co-exist with the ecosystem of the Camargue while under pressure from climate change.
They studied literature and satellite images and interviewed stakeholders, finally concluding that there is an urgent need to bridge the gap between farmers and scientists: Fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing can enable farmers to adapt their agricultural practices to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Unlearn and relearn
Caudel Daley, MSc student from Jamaica, said working in the project helped the students prepare for their upcoming thesis research:
“I realized that the project is gearing us towards our thesis. It is like we go through a process now where we unlearn and relearn again,” he said. “When I tried to think of a problem statement for my research I was instantly thinking about solutions. I realize now that research can also be about understanding the problem without already having a solution in mind.”
Interested?
IHE Delft offers two Master of Science programmes: the MSc in Water and Sustainable Development and the Research MSc in Water and Sustainable Development. Furthermore, IHE Delft is involved in joint MSc Programmes offered with partner institutes.