Fishers' Knowledge of Marine Species Assemblages: Bridging between Scientific and Local Ecological Knowledge in Southeastern Puerto Rico

Increasingly, local ecological knowledge (LEK) held by groups of people engaging directly with their ecosystems for food production is recognized as a valuable tool for understanding environmental change, as well as for ecosystem management and conservation. However, the acceptance of LEK for resource management has been partly hindered by difficulties in translating local knowledge into a form that can be applied directly to Western scientific endeavors. Anthropology's focus on cultural meaning makes its practitioners uniquely qualified to find common ground between different systems of knowledge. Here, I report the use of ethnographic methods to represent Puerto Rican small-scale fishers' knowledge about tropical coastal habitat connectivity and the composition of species assemblages by underwater habitats. These two topics are of current interest for tropical fishery science and their study can benefit from fishers' extensive experience with the coastal environments on which they depend.     

Sharing Ecological Knowledge: Opportunities and Barriers to Uptake

Conserving tropical ecosystems is one of the foremost challenges of the 21st century. Lately, conservation efforts have focused on advancing conservation through dialogue and interaction with and among diverse stakeholders. Knowledge sharing, and specifically the transfer of scientific knowledge, can raise ecological awareness among stakeholders and is necessary to facilitate dialogue, yet the communication of tropical scientific research to local stakeholders is rarely effectively implemented. Such a communication gap potentially undermines the conservation and management of natural resources. The papers in this special section highlight the difficulties and benefits of sharing ecological knowledge, as well as the underlying reasons for why a research–implementation gap has arisen.     

Modeling Sustainability of Arctic Communities: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration of Researchers and Local Knowledge Holders

How will climate change affect the sustainability of Arctic villages over the next 40 years? This question motivated a collaboration of 23 researchers and four Arctic communities (Old Crow, Yukon Territory, Canada; Aklavik, Northwest Territories, Canada; Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada; and Arctic Village, Alaska, USA) in or near the range of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. We drew on existing research and local knowledge to examine potential effects of climate change, petroleum development, tourism, and government spending cutbacks on the sustainability of four Arctic villages. We used data across eight disciplines to develop an Arctic Community Synthesis Model and a Web-based, interactive Possible Futures Model. Results suggested that climate warming will increase vegetation biomass within the herd’s summer range. However, despite forage increasing, the herd was projected as likely to decline with a warming climate because of increased insect harassment in the summer and potentially greater winter snow depths. There was a strong negative correlation between hypothetical, development-induced displacement of cows and calves from utilized calving grounds and calf survival during June. The results suggested that climate warming coupled with petroleum development would cause a decline in caribou harvest by local communities. Because the Synthesis Model inherits uncertainties associated with each component model, sensitivity analysis is required. Scientists and stakeholders agreed that (1) although simulation models are incomplete abstractions of the real world, they helped bring scientific and community knowledge together, and (2) relationships established across disciplines and between scientists and communities were a valuable outcome of the study. Additional project materials, including the Web-based Possible Futures Model, are available at http://www.taiga.net/sustain.     

The Relationship Between Scientific Knowledge and Behaviour: An HIV/AIDS Case

Debates on the role of scientific knowledge to affect behaviour are continuing. The theory of planned behaviour suggests that behaviour is influenced by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control and not by knowledge. However, a large body of knowledge argues that increased HIV/AIDS-related knowledge leads to the adoption of safe behavioural practices. The purpose of this non-experimental survey study, therefore, was to investigate the correlation between academic HIV/AIDS knowledge, functional HIV/AIDS knowledge and self-reported behavioural preferences of 300 biology and 243 non-biology students from nine South African schools. Results suggest a correlation between students’ understanding of academic and functional HIV/AIDS knowledge. The behavioural preferences of both biology and non-biology students were generally the same and safe. Among biology students, correlation was observed between academic HIV/AIDS knowledge and self-reported safe behavioural preferences, which was not the case for non-biology students, where functional HIV/AIDS knowledge correlated with self-reported safe behavioural preferences. Within schools, however, no correlation was found between both forms of HIV/AIDS knowledge and self-reported safe behavioural preferences. There were indications that context-specific local factors have a greater influence on behavioural preferences. These findings suggest that the type of knowledge that could influence behaviour is informed by context-specific dynamics.     

Power/Knowledge,Power/Ignorance: Forest Fires and the State in Mexico

For over a century the Mexican state has justified its control of forests by claiming that rural people are ignorant and destructive fire setters, in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Academic and popular stereotypes of the state have tended to assume that official power and knowledge go hand in hand. In an institutional ethnography ofthe Mexican environment agency, SEMARNAP, I. show how official ignorance is deployed both within and outside state forestry institutions, and how ignorance and complicity may be as important as knowledge in asserting state power. Rather than internalizing official fire discourse, rural people in Mexico learn to mouth polite fictions in their encounters with officials. I argue that the scholarship on governmentality derived from Foucault has uncritically internalized the link between power and knowledge. A closer attention to the production and translation of knowledge within state institutions leads to a more nuancedunderstanding of various forms of obscurity and ignorance which accompany official knowledge claims. This paper is drawn from my fieldwork and archival research in Mexico in the summer of 1998 and between April 2000 and August 2001.     

Local Ecological Knowledge and Institutional Dynamics for Ecosystem Management: A Study of Lake Racken Watershed, Sweden

The sustainable use of resources requires that management practices and institutions take into account the dynamics of the ecosystem. In this paper, we explore the role of local ecological knowledge and show how it is used in management practices by a local fishing association in a contemporary rural Swedish community. We focus on the local management of crayfish, a common-pool resource, and also address the way crayfish management is linked to institutions at different levels of Swedish society. Methods from the social sciences were used for information gathering, and the results were analyzed within the framework of ecosystem management. We found that the practices of local fishing association resemble an ecosystem approach to crayfish management. Our results indicate that local users have substantial knowledge of resource and ecosystem dynamics from the level of the individual crayfish to that of the watershed, as reflected in a variety of interrelated management practices embedded in and influenced by institutions at several levels. We propose that this policy of monitoring at several levels simultaneously, together with the interpretation of a bundle of indicators and associated management responses, enhances the possibility of building ecological resilience into the watershed. Furthermore, we found that flexibility and adaptation are required to avoid command-and-control pathways of resource management. We were able to trace the development of the local fishing association as a response to crisis, followed by the creation of an opportunity for reorganization and the recognition of slow ecosystem structuring variables, and also to define the role of knowledgeable individuals in the whole process. We discuss the key roles of adaptive capacity, institutional learning, and institutional memory for successful ecosystem management and conclude that scientific adaptive management could benefit from a more explicit collaboration with flexible community-based systems of resource management for the implementation of policies as experiments. Received 26 April 2000; accepted 13 October 2000.     

Local Enclosures of Globalization. The Power of Locality

In the discussion of globalization and localization, the mainperspectives are either to unveil how global issues are localized, or toanalyze local modifications resulting form global integration. Incontrast, a perspective from the local to the global is proposed to beable to point at local contents of globalization. Such a perspectiverequires an analysis of how locality is constructed locally. In much ofthe current discussion local stands for places, indigenous people,villages, cities, quarters within cities, factories, regions, nations orplaces. Following older research on ethnicity and recent studies ofmigrant cultures, locality is described as a social construction, whichconnects space, local knowledge and social organization. Locality isconnected to support among those belonging to the locality, interestsand the control of resources. Thus competition and potential conflict islinked to locality. Therefore, speaking of locality implies speaking ofpower-differentials. Whether a locality can assume a dominant positionvis-à-vis other localities and define its discourses as dominantor even as universal depends on its organizational and integrativecapacity for the mobilization and application of resources. Thoughcontrol of resources required by others, the respective local knowledgebecomes a necessity for gaining access to these resources. Consequently,global discourses can and often do have a local background. Accordingly,globalization in quite often global dominance from particular localcontext.     

Out of the Loop: Why Research Rarely Reaches Policy Makers and the Public and What Can be Done

Most of the world's population that derives their livelihoods or part of their livelihoods from forests are out of the information loop. Exclusion of public users of natural resources from access to scientific research results is not an oversight; it is a systemic problem that has costly ramifications for conservation and development. Results of a survey of 268 researchers from 29 countries indicate that institutional incentives support the linear, top-down communication of results through peer-reviewed journal articles, which often guarantees positive performance measurement. While the largest percentage of respondents (34%) ranked scientists as the most important audience for their work, only 15 percent of respondents considered peer-reviewed journals effective in promoting conservation and/or development. Respondents perceived that local initiatives (27%) and training (16%) were likely to lead to success in conservation and development; but few scientists invest in these activities. Engagement with the media (5%), production of training and educational materials (4%) and popular publications (5%) as outlets for scientific findings was perceived as inconsequential (<14%) in measuring scientific performance. Less than 3 percent of respondents ranked corporate actors as an important audience for their work. To ensure science is shared with those who need it, a shift in incentive structures is needed that rewards actual impact rather than only 'high-impact' journals. Widely used approaches and theoretical underpinnings from the social sciences, which underlie popular education and communication for social change, could enhance communication by linking knowledge and action in conservation biology.     

Beyond Ground Truth: GIS and the Environmental Knowledge of Herders, Professional Foresters, and Other Traditional Communities

As a result of increasingly apparent and problematic effects of global information system and remote sensing technologies, there has been increased emphasis on demonstrating and incorporating indigenous environmental knowledges in land use and cover analysis. Such approaches, though ethnographically revealing and politically efficacious, tend to reproduce a model of difference between local and scientific knowledges that is epistemologically untenable. This paper demonstrates an alternative use of geographic information system and remotely sensed imagery to both demonstrate the partiality of mapping technology and show possibilities for critical usage of the tool. Using a case from India, the research shows a method to elicit and explore competing environmental knowledges, including and especially those of scientific experts. The analysis concludes that, for both local producers and expert managers, the cultural meaning of landscapes is dependent on their roles in regional production and resource politics.     

Local perceptions of climate change validated by scientific evidence in the Himalayas

The Himalayas are assumed to be undergoing rapid climate change, with serious environmental, social and economic consequences for more than two billion people. However, data on the extent of climate change or its impact on the region are meagre. Based on local knowledge, we report perceived changes in climate and consequences of such changes for biodiversity and agriculture. Our analyses are based on 250 household interviews administered in 18 villages, and focused group discussions conducted in 10 additional villages in Darjeeling Hills, West Bengal, India and Ilam district of Nepal. There is a widespread feeling that weather is getting warmer, the water sources are drying up, the onset of summer and monsoon has advanced during last 10 years and there is less snow on mountains than before. Local perceptions of the impact of climate change on biodiversity included early budburst and flowering, new agricultural pests and weeds and appearance of mosquitoes. People at high altitudes appear more sensitive to climate change than those at low altitudes. Most local perceptions conform to scientific data. Local knowledge can be rapidly and efficiently gathered using systematic tools. Such knowledge can allow scientists to test specific hypotheses, and policy makers to design mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change, especially in an extraordinarily important part of our world that is experiencing considerable change.     

Fuzzy rule‐based decision support system for evaluation of long‐established forest restoration projects

Although the importance of monitoring and evaluation of restoration actions is increasingly acknowledged, availability of accurate, quantitative monitoring data is very rare for most restoration areas, particularly for long‐established restoration projects. We propose using fuzzy rule‐based expert systems to evaluate the degree of success of restoration actions when available information on project results and impacts largely relies on expert‐based qualitative assessments and rough estimates of quantitative values. These systems use fuzzy logic to manage the uncertainty present in the data and to integrate qualitative and quantitative information. To illustrate and demonstrate the potential of fuzzy rule‐based systems for restoration evaluation, we applied this approach to seven forest restoration projects implemented in Spain between 1897 and 1952, using information compiled in the REACTION database on Mediterranean forest restoration projects. The information available includes both quantitative and expert‐based qualitative data, and covers a wide variety of indicators grouped into technical, structural, functional, and socioeconomic criteria. The fuzzy rule‐based system translates expert knowledge of restoration specialists and forest managers into a set of simple logic rules that integrate information on individual indicators into more general evaluation criteria. The rule‐based approach proposed here can be readily applicable to any kind of restoration project, provided that some information, even if vague and uncertain, is available for a variety of assessment indicators. The evaluation of long‐established forest restoration projects implemented in Spain revealed important asymmetries in the degree of restoration success between technical, structural, functional, and socioeconomic criteria.     

Science,Knowledge and Belief. On Local Understandings of Weather and Climate Change in Amazonia

This article explores different modes of understanding such atmospheric phenomena that in English are described as ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ applying Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. In consequence, focus is not on the physical phenomena as such but on ontological differences as reflected in expressions and practices pertaining to indigenous Matsigenka people and migrants from the Andean highlands to the tropical lowlands, centring on their respective interaction both with each other and, more generally, with the social, natural and supernatural dimensions of the environment. Adhering to ideals of modernity and modern science, the Andean migrants employ the climate change discourse as an indication upon social advancement to promote and legitimize their superiority over the allegedly backward and irrational Matsigenka to whom the climate discourse makes little sense. The climate change discourse thus serves here as a means of environmental colonialism in order to turn Matsigenka people into proper citizens.     

The universal fuzzy logical framework of neural cir-cuits and its application in modeling primary visual cortex

Analytical study of large-scale nonlinear neural circuits is a difficult task. Here we analyze the function of neural systems by probing the fuzzy logical framework of the neural cells' dynamical equations. Al- though there is a close relation between the theories of fuzzy logical systems and neural systems and many papers investigate this subject, most investigations focus on finding new functions of neural systems by hybridizing fuzzy logical and neural system. In this paper, the fuzzy logical framework of neural cells is used to understand the nonlinear dynamic attributes of a common neural system by abstracting the fuzzy logical framework of a neural cell. Our analysis enables the educated design of network models for classes of computation. As an example, a recurrent network model of the primary visual cortex has been built and tested using this approach.     

Conservation and human livelihoods at the crossroads: Local needs and knowledge in the management of Arabuko Sokoke Forest

Arabuko Sokoke Forest is the largest remaining single block of indigenous dry coastal tropical forest in Eastern Africa. Households within a 5 km buffer zone depend heavily on the forest for their livelihood needs, and the pressure on forest resources is on the increase. In May 2015, 109 households were interviewed on resources they obtain from the forest, in terms of the self‐reported level of monthly income. We found household income and farm size significantly positively correlated with benefits from the forest, highlighting the possible influence of household wealth in exploiting forest resources. A large proportion of households (32%) had limited knowledge of local birds, while human–bird conflict was reported by 44% of the households. While many households were keen to participate in conservation projects that maintain the forest, 44% had no knowledge of the forest management plan, and 60% of those interviewed had no idea of how forest zones were designated for particular activities. Drivers for local community participation in conservation projects appear to be sustainable income and fulfilment of basic household needs.     

Lessons Learned from Reconstructing Interactions Between Local Ecological Knowledge, Fisheries Science, and Fisheries Management in the Commercial Fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Questions centered on the development of local and traditional ecological knowledge and the relationship of that knowledge to the development of conservation and management practices have recently attracted critical attention. We examine these questions with respect to the dynamic commercial fisheries of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The knowledge of fish harvesters coevolves with fishing practices and is embedded in a dynamic socioecological network that extends into and beyond the fisher, fishery households, and communities to include management, technologies, markets, and marine ecological conditions. Changes in these networks have moved knowledge and practices related to fishing in directions defined by policy, science, economic rationality, and new ecological realities. We characterize this movement as a shift along a continuum from local ecological knowledge (LEK) towards globalized harvesting knowledge (GHK) as harvesters become increasingly disconnected from socioecological relationships associated with traditional species and stocks. We conclude with a discussion of how LEK/GHK have interacted over time and space with other knowledge systems (particularly science) to influence management, and suggest that contingent, empirical evaluations of these interactions will provide a fruitful avenue for future interdisciplinary research.

Synthesis: Sharing Ecological Knowledge—The Way Forward

Knowledge sharing between scientists and nonscientist stakeholders is necessary to implement research findings in an appropriate and effective manner within the context of the environment and conservation sectors. Yet scientific ecological knowledge is rarely shared and transferred effectively. This special section has addressed a number of opportunities and barriers to the improvement of scientific communication and knowledge transfer with respect to environmental management in tropical settings. A main challenge is seen in creating a research 'impact-metric' system, which is fundamental to foster knowledge sharing with institutional research incentives. Partnering with local institutions and research centers as well as participatory research methods will promote effective knowledge exchange. Research relevance and impact will be improved by matching interdisciplinary research with local capacity building and support through research activities. We conclude that training the next generation of tropical biologists through more effective knowledge sharing will be crucial to the long term success of scientifically based environmental management in tropical regions.     

地方知识在水安全格局识别中的作用——以重庆御临河流域龙兴、石船镇为例

景观安全格局作为一种生态规划途径,其识别过程具有综合性和复杂性。立足于水安全格局,力求挖掘地方知识在解决特定场地水生态问题中的意义。研究区域为重庆御临河流域的石船、龙兴镇。"谷歌地图+辅助问卷"的方法收集了大量地方知识对场地水过程的认知(包括雨洪、灌溉过程,饮用水过程,捕鱼过程等)。研究对比了地方知识与科学知识的关系,通过结合两者的信息共同构建当地的水安全格局,并在过程中总结了地方知识在水安全格局识别中的作用。研究肯定了地方知识在水安全格局识别过程中的重要价值。地方知识与科学知识在一些水过程识别结果上具有很强的相似性。在科学数据充分的情况下,地方知识是对科学识别的有效补充及模型校正,例如能够为径流和径流交汇点等级划分提供地方依据。在科学数据匮乏的情况下,地方知识能够快速支撑某些水过程的分析以及格局识别,例如地方知识能够识别出地下水水位、地下河、鱼类栖息地与产卵场等关键空间要素,并且提供微观的调节措施以减少水库运行对鱼类的影响。整体而言,地方知识具有一定独立识别大尺度雨洪安全格局的能力,但也有自身的局限,包括认知范围狭小,地方性强等。研究为地方知识在景观安全格局应用中的科学体系提供了一个初步探索。     

Evaluating the accuracy and calibration of expert predictions under uncertainty: predicting the outcomes of ecological research

Aim Expert knowledge routinely informs ecological research and decision‐making. Its reliability is often questioned, but is rarely subject to empirical testing and validation. We investigate the ability of experts to make quantitative predictions of variables for which the answers are known. Location Global. Methods Experts in four ecological subfields were asked to make predictions about the outcomes of scientific studies, in the form of unpublished (in press) journal articles, based on information in the article introduction and methods sections. Estimates from students were elicited for one case study for comparison. For each variable, participants assessed a lower and upper bound, best guess and level of confidence that the observed value will lie within their ascribed interval. Responses were assessed for (1) accuracy: the degree to which predictions corresponded with observed experimental results, (2) informativeness: precision of the uncertainty bounds, and (3) calibration: degree to which the uncertainty bounds contained the truth as often as specified. Results Expert responses were found to be overconfident, specifying 80% confidence intervals that captured the truth only 49–65% of the time. In contrast, student 80% intervals captured the truth 76% of the time, displaying close to perfect calibration. Best estimates from experts were on average more accurate than those from students. The best students outperformed the worst experts. No consistent relationships were observed between performance and years of experience, publication record or self‐assessment of expertise. Main conclusions Experts possess valuable knowledge but may require training to communicate this knowledge accurately. Expert status is a poor guide to good performance. In the absence of training and information on past performance, simple averages of expert responses provide a robust counter to individual variation in performance.