Sarah Heynssens, Author at Quetelet Center

Organic urban waste as fertiliser in agriculture

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT & POPPKAD

Date:

2017

Category:

Scientific publication

ORGANIC URBAN WASTE AS FERTILISER IN AGRICULTURE

In his article, Pieter De Graef questions the historical examples of closed cradle-to-cradle systems, which are put forward by ecological historians as forerunners of current closed nutrient cycles. By using agricultural censuses and cadastral statistics from the LOKSTAT and POPPKAD databases, he calculated how much fertiliser was produced in the different regions of Belgium and shows that there were no closed nutrient cycles.

Article:

De Graef, Pieter. “Food from country to city, waste from city to country: an environmental symbiosis? Fertiliser improvement in eighteenth-century Flanders”. Journal for the History of Environment and Society 2 (2017): 25–61.

Abstract:

“Alternative approaches to resolve bottlenecks in food production often champion the reuse of urban organic waste as fertiliser in agriculture in order to close the nutrient cycle between city and country (cradle to cradle). References are often made to the past because environmental historians tend to work the use of urban wastes into a story of environmental symbiosis between city and countryside. This article argues, however, that closed nutrient cycles did not exist even in pre-industrial society, as the way in which agriculture was structured had a huge impact on the demand for manure. Starting from two agricultural regions in eighteenth-century Flanders, this research calls for more attention to regional structures of agriculture in which cities were embedded and to how these agro-systems shaped nutrient flows from the city to the country by very diverse patterns of demand for fertilisers, leading to unequal redistributive flows of nutrients from towns to different agricultural regions.”

What does STREAM have to offer you?

DETAILS

Used database:

STREAM

Date:

2018

Category:

Database and scientific publication

WHAT DOES STREAM HAVE TO OFFER YOU?

Check out the STREAM website or the STREAM database page to gain an insight into the sources that were processed in the database and how the historical geographic information system was constructed. Want to know more? Then contact the Quetelet Center to start working with the datasets yourself.

Article:

Devos, Isabelle, Torsten Wiedemann, Ruben Demey, Sven Vrielinck, Thijs Lambrecht, Philippe De Maeyer, Elien Ranson, Michiel Van den Berghe, Glenn Plettinck en Anne Winter. (2018), “STREAM. A spatio-temporal research infrastructure for early modern Flanders and Brabant: sources, data and methods”, International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 12, nr. 2 (2018): 102-119.

Abstract:

“This article presents the technical characteristics of the Belgian STREAM-project (2015- 2019). The goal of STREAM is to facilitate and innovate historical research into local and regional processes through the development of a spatiotemporal infrastructure for early modern Brabant and Flanders, two of the most urbanized and developed areas of pre-industrial Europe. To this end, STREAM systematically collects a range of key data from a diversity of historical sources to provide a geographically comprehensive and long-run quantitative and spatial account of early modern society at the local level (parishes, villages, towns) regarding territory, transport, demography, agriculture, industry and trade, related to the development of a tailored historical geographical information system (GIS) based on the well-known Ferraris map (1770-1778). This article discusses the possibilities and pitfalls of the data collection and the construction of a spatial infrastructure for the pre-statistical era.”

Database on single women in the early modern period available!

DETAILS

Used database:

SINGLE

Date:

2018

Category:

Database

DATABASE ON SINGLE WOMEN IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD AVAILABLE!

The SINGLE database was created by Sofie De Langhe as part of her doctoral project, entitled “Oude vrijsters: bestaansstrategieën van ongehuwde vrouwen op het Brugse platteland, late 18de-begin 19de eeuw” (“Old maids: survival strategies of unmarried women in the Bruges countryside, late 18th-early 19th century”).

Sofie De Langhe built an impressive database with the life-course data of never-married rural women living in the Franc of Bruges in the 18th and 19th centuries. She collected biographical and other data on unmarried women from population censuses, parish registers, civil registers of births, marriages and deaths, and numerous other sources.

The database is useful for anyone looking for information about gender relations, property structures and household compositions. Contact the Quetelet Center or check out the SINGLE database page.

The Ferraris map vectorised: the development of a new GIS tool

DETAILS

Used database:

STREAM

Date:

2018

Category:

Scientific publication

THE FERRARIS MAP VECTORISED: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW GIS TOOL

The 18th-century Carte de Cabinet of Joseph de Ferraris is one of the most important historical maps of Belgium. The map is a unique source due to the many topographical elements that are represented in detail on the original sheets. In order to use these valuable data for research purposes, they must be redrawn and converted into editable tables. The STREAM team has developed tools for doing this labour-intensive work in a structured and efficient way. All the roads, waterways, buildings, boundaries and other elements on the map are meticulously redrawn with these tools and placed in an extensive vector file. This file is then enriched with a wide range of historical data, including data on the population, agriculture and industry. The result is a vast collection of geographical data that makes pioneering spatio-temporal research possible. Would you like to see a historical source or census in map form? Then be sure to contact the staff at the Quetelet Center to discuss what the possibilities are.

Article:

De Maeyer, Philippe, Elien Ranson, Kristien Ooms, Karen De Coene, Bart De Wit, Michiel Van den Berghe, Sven Vrielinck, Torsten Wiedemann, Anne Winter, Rink Kurk, and Isabelle Devos. “User-Centered Design of a Collaborative, Object Oriented Historical GI-Platform”. In Dissemination of Cartographic Knowledge: 6th International Symposium of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography, 379–90. Springer, 2018.

Abstract:

“The project STREAM (Spatio-Temporal Research Infrastructure for Early Modern Flanders and Brabant) aims to create a research infrastructure that will allow spatio-temporal analyses in order to improve our understanding of the demographic, social and economic changes that occurred in Flanders and Brabant (Belgium) between 1550 and 1800. The Carte de Cabinet of count Joseph de Ferraris (1771–1778) offers information on various subjects for that time period and is considered one of the most important products of Belgian cartographic history. Hence this historical map was used as the main source document to develop a vectorial geographical database that constitutes an important step towards the creation of a research infrastructure. To build this geographical database a retrogressive method was used in order to interpret the historical map and its related data in an absolute geographical reference system, which the Carte de Cabinet lacks. Since STREAM results from a collaboration between researchers from different disciplines a specific user-oriented editing platform was developed to support the different actors. This platform allows the digitisation of the historical road network in a geographic reference system based on the current road network by means of a slider, a shift tool and an editing tool. Initial analyses have confirmed the strong geometric distortions of the Carte de Cabinet but also the multiple possibilities for spatio(-temporal) research when combining the information of the Carte de Cabinet with cartographic analyses of other cartographic documents.”

Neuroscientists get to work with LOKSTAT data

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

2018

Category:

Publication

NEUROSCIENTISTS GET TO WORK WITH LOKSTAT DATA

The findings of the research by Aleida Frissen, Jim van Os, Sanne Peeters, Ed Gronenschild and Machteld Marcelis were recently published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. The scientists show that reduced grey matter in the brains of people with a psychotic disorder may be the result of increased sensitivity to environmental risks, particularly in male patients. Read this remarkable study yourself.

Article:

Frissen, Aleida, Jim van Os, Sanne Peeters, Ed Gronenschild, and Machteld Marcelis; for Genetic Risk and Outcome in Psychosis (G.R.O.U.P.). “Evidence that reduced gray matter volume in psychotic disorder is associated with exposure to environmental risk factors”. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 271 (2018): 100–110.

Abstract:

“The aim of this study was to examine whether cannabis use, childhood trauma and urban upbringing are associated with total gray matter volume (GMV) in individuals with (risk for) psychotic disorder and whether this is sex-specific. T1-weighted MRI scans were acquired from 89 patients with a psychotic disorder, 95 healthy siblings of patients with psychotic disorder and 87 controls. Multilevel random regression analyses were used to examine main effects and interactions between group, sex and environmental factors in models of GMV. The three-way interaction between group, sex and cannabis (χ2 =12.43, p<0.01), as well as developmental urbanicity (χ2 = 6.29, p = 0.01) were significant, indicating that cannabis use and developmental urbanicity were associated with lower GMV in the male patient group (cannabis: B= -32.54, p < 0.01; developmental urbanicity: B= -10.23, p=0.03). For childhood trauma, the two-way interaction with group was significant (χ2 = 5.74, p = 0.02), indicating that childhood trauma was associated with reduced GMV in the patient group (B=-9.79, p=0.01). The findings suggest that reduction of GMV in psychotic disorder may be the outcome of differential sensitivity to environmental risks, particularly in male patients.”

Culling the herds

DETAILS

Used database:

POPPKAD

Date:

November 2018

Category:

Scientific publication

CULLING THE HERDS

In their article entitled “Culling the herds”, Adam Sundberg and Filip Van Roosbroeck compared government measures against the rinderpest outbreak of 1769-1785 in the Austrian and the Northern Netherlands. The researchers calculated the mortality rate of the livestock in both regions based on, among other things, statistics on land use from the POPPKAD database. According to the authors, the different socio-ecological structures and the divergent practices in commercial agriculture played a more important role in the spread of the disease than the policies implemented by the different governments.

Article:

Van Roosbroeck, Filip, and Adam Sundberg. “Culling the herds? Regional divergences in rinderpest mortality in Flanders and South Holland, 1769-1785”. TSEG/The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 14, no. 3 (2018): 31–55.

Abstract:

“The cattle disease rinderpest devastated Europe throughout the eighteenth century. The practice of preventative slaughter, or stamping out, has been seen as the most effective method of containing the disease. Historians frame this strategy as a measure of the effectiveness of centralized bureaucracy in handling epidemic outbreaks. The Austrian Netherlands, which enacted a stamping out policy during the rinderpest epidemic of 1769-1785, is often cast opposite the decentralized Dutch Republic, which did not. That mortality was more severe in Holland than in Flanders is interpreted as a consequence of this difference. This article compares the disease management of Flanders and South Holland as well as the differential mortality of cattle in the initial years of the outbreak. We argue that stamping out should not be used as the standard for evaluating effective management. Both South Holland and Flanders relied on a high degree of state intervention. No strategies were universally effective. Explanations must be sought in regional socio-ecological structures. Rather than a consequence of state action or inaction, rinderpest mortality responded to the movement of cattle for pasturing and trade, structural differences in land use, and the resultant divergences in agricultural practices and herd management. Rather than state intervention, extensive commercial cattleholding explains the highly variable mortality.”