Sarah Laborde, Postdoctoral Researcher in the MORSL lab is the 2014 Profile Picture Winner of the Anthropology and Environment Society.

 

Sarah is working with an interdisciplinary team on the Modeling Regime Shifts in the Logone Floodplain (MORSL) project, which aims to study and model the interplay of social and ecological dynamics in the Logone Floodplain, in the Far-North Region of Cameroon. The project especially focuses on the proliferation of a fishing technique – the digging of canals to catch fish when the flood recedes – that is changing the waterscape of the floodplain. It is a collaborative effort between anthropologists, geographers, ecologists, hydrologists and computer scientists from The Ohio State University and the University of Maroua, in Cameroon.

 

This image shows a Musgum fisherman who lives in the south of the Logone Floodplain. His main source of income is his fishing canal, which appears in the photo behind him. Every day at dawn in the dry season, he walks the 8 km of flat land separating him from the end of his canal, which he relentlessly deepens and lengthens until the early afternoon. He wanted me to see his hands as witnesses of his hard work, which he is hoping will help him catch more fish when the canal-fishing season comes. Canals like his have proliferated over the last few decades in the Logone Floodplain, leading to community tensions; the levee he has built by his canal to drain more water and fish through is at the origin of a long and unresolved conflict with his neighbors and downstream canal owners.