Organizational Context
This research is done within the RAIZ project. It aims to assess the climatic risk related to the sustainable intensification of cropping system and its impact on the resilience of smallholder farms in sub-humid Zimbabwe. On-farms trials are conducted during two cropping seasons to assess the performance of sustainable intensification options on rainfed cropping systems and to calibrate the Stics mechanistic crop model. This crop model is used to conduct a virtual experiment to assess the impact climate interannual variability on the performance of rainfed cropping systems over 20 years. A framework to assess the resilience of smallholder farms is developed based on a review of the literature and applied to different farm types to assess their resilience according to farm’s context and the adoption of sustainable intensification options. Focus group discussions are organized to collect farmers’ feedbacks on the sustainable intensification options performance, the results of the virtual experiment and the resilience assessment.
Roles
The data are collected by the PhD student Valentin Pret.
The data will be analyzed by the PhD student Valentin Pret, by Gatien Falconnier – Cirad researcher (supervisor) and by Benjamin Heuclin – Cirad statistician.
Dataset name (or reference)
Dataset name (or reference)
| Description | Geographic origin
Geographic origin |
Time period
Temporal coverage | Dataset manager Dataset leader
| Data storage and access Data storage and access[1] |
Modelling_SI | Simulations of sustainable intensification options performances for 20 years climatic series (yield, nitrogen content, nitrogen leaching, etc.) | Virtual experiment | March 2023 – end of RAIZ | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Farmes_perceptions_SI | Farmers' perceptions on sustainable intensification options performances under current growing season and 20 years climatic series, constraints and levers for adoption at farm scale | Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | March 2023 – March 2024 | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Soil_ data_SI | Basic soil characteristics (texture, SOC, total N, P, pH…) down to 1.80m depth | Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | November 2022- end of RAIZ | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Soil_nitrogen_data_SI | Regular soil mineral nitrogen measurements up to 1.60m | Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | November 2022- April 2023 | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Crop_data_SI | Regular leaf area index, crop phenology measurements, biomass at flowering and harvest, crop yield at harvest, biomass and nitrogen content at flowering and harvest, biological nitrogen fixation at flowering and harvest for legumes | Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | November 2022-May 2023 | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Weather_SI | Continuous measurement of weather data (rainfall, air temperature, air humidity, wind speed, etc) using a weather station and raingauges | Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | November 2022-October 2023 | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Persnnal computer, external hard drive |
Water_dynamics_SI | Continuous soil moisture measurements every 10 cm up to 1.80m depth using a Trime probe on red and sandy soils | Sustainable intensification trials in Murehwa district – ward 28 – Manjonjo, Makombe and Chitemerere villages | November 2021-July 2023 | Gatien Falconnier, UR AIDA, CIRAD | Personal computer, external hard drive |
Short and long term storage
All data will be stored on my local harddisk in a folder called Thesis.
Within this Thesis folder, I'll create per chapter the folders: Data, Model, Paper and Scripts. The Data folder has two sub-folders called: Raw and Processed.
Folder contents:
- Data - Raw sub-folder: Contains all raw data and meta-data (a description of your data).
- Data - Processed sub-folder: Contains all processed data.
- Model folder: Complete listing of the model and the model results & analysis.
- Paper folder: Text of a chapter / paper.
- Scripts folder: Contains all scripts used.
The complete content of my local Thesis folder will be stored on my YoDa-drive.
During periods I'm abroad, I'll backup the complete content of my local Thesis folder to a Dropbox or MS-Onedrive Thesis folder and share the contents with my supervisor(s).
- Data from on-farms trials conducted during two cropping seasons (including soil and crop analysis)
- Calibration files of the STICS crop model
- Simulations outputs of the virtual experiment processed with the Stics crop model over 20 years
Sharing and Ownership
Data sharing policy within the RAIZ project is being developed but not yet completed. The objective is to share as much as possible of the data after the publication of the results from their analysis. (except for farmers personal data)
Gatien Falconnier (supervisor) will be the keeper of the data at the end of the PhD. Some of the data might be published on a dataverse after publication of the results.