The first objective of this research is to shadow the scientists and the network of actors who implement these sensors in the observatories: how they install instruments in the landscape, extract measurements, collate the valuable information from the environmental sensors, and how they share it with the citizens and other actors of the territory. We are particularly interested in how it defines anew the concept of an observatory.
The second objective is to trace the role and use of instruments set up in the observatories of the TERRA FORMA Project. The instruments allow the scientists to extract and acquire new knowledge on chemical flows, flows of microorganisms, temperature changes, levels of pollution, and so on. The instruments have a certain power or agency because they enable scientists to get access inside this cosmos. In particular, we will focus on how sensors circulate between different actors, and may shape a new understanding of territories, perhaps more cosmopolitical because these sensors compel us to consider more entities. Indeed, these sensors could allow us to re-explore territories, to describe these terrestrial and living systems from new angles, with new lenses.
The third objective is to provide new tools to trace these cosmopolitical Earth sensors: writing and mapping experiments are developed throughout the project. These maps give up the non-located space of the satellite viewpoint (above the ground, a « view from nowhere »), to land on the ground and trace the « life points » of the actors, human and non-human, monitored by the sensors. The maps follow these life points (monitored by the sensors), which are views from « inside » of the complexity of the territories. These maps are developed for each territory where sensors are deployed to monitor the most problematic biogeochemical cycles. Therefore, the observatories have a new “cartography” that enable them to rethink their relationship with society and politics. At the same time, these maps make the notion of geopolitics evolve towards a “gaiapolitics” (Latour, 2017), in order to better grasp the possible conflicting positions of a policy in the Anthropocene.
Ethnographic observations
Ethnographic observations involve travelling to sites to observe scientific practices, understand the issues and problems at stake on each site, conduct interviews with the people who work on them, and thus be able to produce alternative maps in which elements of the territory that are otherwise little or not visible are made visible (e.g. at Ploemeur: everything that happens in the underground environment). The challenge is also to produce maps « from the sensors’ point of view »: what the vision of the sensors changes in the cartography and therefore in the way we understand the territory.
Therefore, to understand what is going on in these observatories, we need to go in the field, to stay few days sometimes, to follow the scientists and to gather their knowledge through interviews, to see how they use the sensors, what they measure, how it changes the way we understand what the environment (the critical zone) is. The ethnographic methodology involves long stays in the field, i.e. in observatories (outdoor) and laboratories (indoor) where I can follow scientists at work but also the sensors, the entities and the phenomena, etc. Sensors are windows, optics, from which scientists measure, observe, trace, phenomena and collect a significant amount of data.
Some measures consist of taking samples from the soil or the water, or to install tiny devices that they let on site and which record the chemical composition of the water for few days. Some other sensors are more perennial in the landscape, some are low tech whereas some are high tech instruments such as the flux tower to understand the flux and composition of the atmosphere.
Observatory and data collected
“The scientists work in observatories as new research infrastructures, following the US network founded in 2001. They implemented local outdoor observatories located at different places on Earth (Brantley, Goldhaber and Ragnarsdottir 2017; Richter and Billings 2015; Brantley et al., 2017; Gaillardet et al. 2018). An observatory is set in a watershed[1], which is not an administrative territory here, but a geological entity in which water circulates. It becomes an observatory when equipped with instruments that register the dynamics of the Critical Zone. In these outdoor laboratories, also called Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs), the scientists study geomorphology, water circulation and chemical exchanges, such as the circulation of carbon, nitrates, phosphorus, sulphur, and how they are disturbed by human activities. A CZO is thus a monitored environment equipped with scientific instruments from which data, samplings, are collected and brought to indoor laboratories in buildings.”[2] . In this context, TERRA FORMA appears is a continuity of the CRITEX program[3].
New data have been collected through ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews. Drawings from scientists have also been collected. Three observatories have been studied regrouping 5 or 6 people each. A total of 15 interviews have been reached, and more interactions during visits and workshops. Ethnographic observations have taken place on site, either in the natural context of the observatory or at the scientists’ offices. Scientists interviewees were contacted through TERRA FORMA network which resulted in a list of potential participants for each observatory.
Four methodologies have been used simultaneously in each fieldwork:
1/ site visits and ethnographic observations,
Site visits and ethnographic observations is conducted at the beginning of each field work in the three TERRA FORMA Observatories, with the manager and 2 or 3 other scientists (depending on the size of the observatory), where informal presentation of the terrain, tracing of the scientists’ itineraries, and observations of daily routine (scientific activities such as samplings) is collected. A description of the observatory station by station, following the field trip is written. We stop at the stations where measurements are held and we ask the scientists to describe what they are doing, recording, with what instrument, what phenomena, etc. In this way, we have recordings of the explanation, photography and videos, notes and sketches of the different stations composing the observatory, as the drawing of the map is based on what it is possible to see through each sensor of the stations. This allows us to reconstitute a narrative of the ‘territory-watershed’, from upstream to downstream and from the depth to the surface. This narrative matches the structure of the map.
2/ semi-structured interviews,
I then visited the laboratory to find out how they extract the data from the field, how they process it and what images they use to circulate it, to make sense of the data or modelisation. Semi-structured interviews are held once with each person at the workplace (either in the landscape or in lab). An interview last approximately 60 minutes and no more than 90 minutes (see extracts of the interviews in the Fieldbooks). Semi-structured interviews on site take place during ethnographic observations. They explore some aspects of what is seen on the site. They ask scientists about their practice, the changes in the landscape they have observed, how they relate to invisible phenomena with specific instruments, and what are their attachments to the territory of which they are part. An interview can last one or two hours. A guide is used when conducting interviews with the scientists working on observatories chosen for the TERRA FORMA Equipex project. Since it is a semi-structured interview, it is not treated as a strict questionnaire or a script to follow but has an open structure and is treated as a list of probes and questions to draw from when it seems appropriate. The wording of the questions may also change as a result of the evolution of the project as the researcher is able to glean more of the interviewees’ vocabulary. Moreover, the order and wording of these questions will be specific to each interview based on which observatory they are from, their background and relationship to the TERRA FORMA network. Complementary questions include what the specific sensors are developed for each observatory and their adaptation to the other sites as they all need to be deploy in the three sites. We ask for the existing sensors and the ones that are in development to understand how each observatory is currently equipped, what is missing and how the scientists aim to fill the gap of knowledge with the new sensors.
3/ content analysis of scientific reports
Existing data will be collected through scientific journals which publish scientific data. It may contain texts and imageries.
4/ collaborative work at mapping
The aim of the project is to generate maps from the perspective of the sensors in the three sites / observatories where the sensors could be implemented. To draw these maps, we need first to draw the map of the knowledge already existing on the observatory as they are already equipped with a range of sensors covering different variables. This is called the “conceptual model”, gathering the work of the observatory over many years since its creation. This map is a synthesis of the qualitative information gathered through interviews and observations on site with the scientists explaining how each instruments collect, sample, measure various elements, and then a recollection of the images they show me in the labs where they work. This enables to create a first map which is then brought in a collective workshop with the participants of the site visits and/or interviews to discuss the production of a version of map, add information, rectify some, move things, etc. The map is rectified afterwards the workshop, and a synthesis is produced. Adding to this map are the new lenses, scopes, points of views added by the TF sensors in development in a third time. In this context, maps become speculative, but they still intend to describe a territory, a reality that is out of reach if we don’t have the sensors to grasp it. Then this version of the map could travel to other actors, especially to the elective representatives of spatial policies – but needs to be mediated in a presentation or a workshop for example, where we will describe our understanding of the territory through the lens, the sensors of the scientists.
[1] A watershed or drainage basin or catchment area is, in standard geoscience knowledge, an “area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. The drainage basin includes all the surface water from rain runoff, snowmelt, hail, sleet and nearby streams that run downslope towards the shared outlet, as well as the groundwater underneath the earth’s surface. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the area covered by the basin and channelling it to a single point. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide, making up a succession of higher geographical features (such as a ridge, hill or mountains) forming a barrier.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_basin
[2] Extracts from Arènes PhD thesis
[3] The CRITEX research programme, Innovative Equipment for the Critical Zone, has enabled the establishment of the Critical Zone network in France by funding the development of new observation instruments. CRITEX[3] is one of the 36 equipment programs funded by the “Plan d’investissement pour l’Avenir” initiative of the French Government in order to improve French competitivity and was awarded a total of 7 M€ from 2012 and for seven years. It is managed by CNRS under the scientific leadership of the two French networks RBV and H+ (Réseau des Bassins Versants and réseau des sites hydrogéologique respectively). This vast instrumentation programme for existing observatories that had previously few exchanges between them made it possible to unite them around a common objective: the knowledge of the CZ. Thus, OZCAR[3] was created and allowed the recruitment of thesis students, the hiring of post-docs, exchanges with international scientists. A white paper established the OZCAR network in the country, created by Jérôme Gaillardet and then comanaged by Isabelle Braud: “OZCAR: le réseau français des observatoires des zones critiques” in 2018.