ILRI welcomes Miriam Kasebele

Funded by the INSA project, Miriam Kasebele, a PhD Student under the supervision of Dr Lutz Breuer at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, is currently visiting the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya. For her PhD, Miriam is looking at understanding the fluxes of nitrogen and hydrology in the Mau catchment, Kenya. During her secondment she is working with Dr Sonja Leitner (ILRI) as well as performing fieldwork.

After a rocky start due to challenging rural road networks, Miriam’s fieldwork is now going well. She is currently collecting samples from rainfall, throughfall (water that collects after running through crop canopies) and groundwater wells. She will use the data collected to estimate the nitrogen balance in a catchment characterised by smallholder agriculture in the Mau Forest Complex in Kenya.

In the picture, Miriam is preparing the spectro::lyser, a spectrophotometer that uses the UV-visible wavelength spectrum to determine water quality parameters like nitrate, in order to determine nitrate concentrations of a subset of the samples. The remaining samples will be analysed for total dissolved nitrogen in the laboratory.

Miriam reports that her secondment so far has been very educative! It has helped her to plan better and be more resilient to various fieldwork environments. She feels fortunate to have engaged with farm owners that are very supportive of her project, willingly providing information and space on their farms for her to install her equipment. Her experience in the lab at ILRI has also been very positive, and she is confident that the supportive and friendly staff, combined with the state-of-the art equipment operating at Mazingira lab at ILRI will contribute to very successful outcomes from her visit.