Topic
Inkaba
About: Inkaba is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2 publications have been published within this topic receiving 20 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: In the Xhosa language, inkaba means the central point from which all energy, material, and knowledge emerge and are recycled as discussed by the authors, which encapsulates a sense of total interconnectivity Uniting inkaba with yeAfrica adds a regional perspective to a project that has as its central focus the understanding of the dynamic interactions between the Earth and its life support systems.
Abstract: In the Xhosa language, ‘inkaba’ means ‘navel,’ the central point from which all energy, material, and knowledge emerge and are recycled. The word encapsulates a sense of total interconnectivity Uniting inkaba with yeAfrica adds a regional perspective to a project that has as its central focus the understanding of the dynamic interactions between the Earth and its life-support systems.
Following two years of workshops and proposal writing, the German and South African Earth science communities embarked in 2004 on a five-year program, Inkaba yeAfrica, to survey a cone-shaped sector of the Earth from core to space, intersecting its solid surface around southern Africa and its ocean basins (Figure l).The vision is to track the history of this sector's components back over at least the past 200 million years to understand Earth systems processes and their evolving interactions at different scales and rates.
23 citations
TL;DR: The second edition of the South African Journal of Geology special issue of the Inkaba yeAfrica project as discussed by the authors was published in 2013, where the authors again report the scientific results of this truly major trans-disciplinary Earth system science programme.
Abstract: Welcome to the second Inkaba yeAfrica special issue of the South African Journal of Geology. Exactly five years since the first special issue, we again report the scientific results of this truly major trans-disciplinary Earth system science programme. The name Inkaba yeAfrica was suggested by the well-known African Linguist Sizwe Satyo. Inkaba is an isiXhosa word encapsulating a sense of total interconnectivity. Literally, it means navel, the central point, a point from which all energy, material and knowledge emerge and are recycled. Uniting this with yeAfrica evokes the broader meaning of the Earth System in Africa. With Inkaba yeAfrica, we aim to explore this connectivity of our Planet in Space (Figure 1).
### Inkaba yeAfrica is Big Science
The scale and complexity of research themes in Inkaba yeAfrica are what set it apart from other Earth science efforts, globally (Figure 2). Inkaba yeAfrica is special because it explicitly explores and incorporates the links between the solid earth, its fluid envelopes – the latter being the sole focus of most earth system science programmes concerned with global change – and its planetary setting in Space. Inkaba yeAfrica today comprises 20 subprojects (see www.inkaba.org). Much of the science carried out requires layout of expensive field and laboratory equipment, including use of marine research vessels and earth-orbiting satellites. The science teams are putting these resources to bear on truly Grand Challenges of extreme complexity and urgent socio-economic relevance. The papers collected in this volume attest to that.
Since 2003, teams of scientists from both countries have been surveying a cone-shaped sector of the Earth from its core to space, enclosing South Africa and the Southern Oceans at its solid surface, and tracking the history and interactions of its components into the past. South Africa was chosen as the research site since it is quite simply one of the …
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Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2011 | 1 |
| 2006 | 1 |