Indigenous People’s Detection of Rapid Ecological Change
- Authors: Lauer, Matthew , Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124811 , vital:35699 , https://doi.10.1111/cobi.12250
- Description: When sudden catastrophic events occur, it becomes critical for coastal communities to detect and respond to environmental transformations because failure to do so may undermine overall ecosystem resilience and threaten people’s livelihoods. We therefore asked how capable of detecting rapid ecological change following massive environmental disruptions local, indigenous people are. We assessed the direction and periodicity of experimental learning of people in the Western Solomon Islands after a tsunami in 2007. We compared the results of marine science surveys with local ecological knowledge of the benthos across 3 affected villages and 3 periods before and after the tsunami. We sought to determine how people recognize biophysical changes in the environment before and after catastrophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis and whether people have the ability to detect ecological changes over short time scales or need longer time scales to recognize changes. Indigenous people were able to detect changes in the benthos over time. Detection levels differed between marine science surveys and local ecological knowledge sources over time, but overall patterns of statistically significant detection of change were evident for various habitats. Our findings have implications for marine conservation, coastal management policies, and disaster-relief efforts because when people are able to detect ecological changes, this, in turn, affects how they exploit and manage their marine resources.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Benthic mapping using local aerial photo interpretation and resident taxa inventories for designing marine protected areas
- Authors: Shankar, Aswani , Lauer, Matthew
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439059 , vital:73541 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892906003183"
- Description: Given the frequent socioeconomic, political and concomitant ecological failures of science-driven marine protected area (MPA) programmes, it is now important to design MPAs by integrating natural and social science research more comprehensively. This study shows how indigenous peoples assisted in the design of MPAs by identifying marine substrates and related resident taxa on aerial photos, information which was then incorporated into a geographical information system (GIS) database, along with dive survey data. Two questions were asked: (1) Is indigenous ecological knowledge accurate enough for mapping the benthos and associated taxa? (2) Is such an approach an appropriate way for assisting in the biological and social design of MPAs in Oceania? Conventional quadrat field dive surveys were used to measure the accuracy of substrate identification by local informants and a visual survey was used to test hypotheses formulated from local knowledge regarding the spatial distribution and relative abundance of non-cryptic species within certain benthic habitats. Equivalence rates between indigenous aerial photo interpretations of dominant benthic substrates and in situ dive surveys were 75–85% for a moderately detailed classification scheme of the benthos, which included nine locally-defined abiotic and biotic benthic classes for the MPA seabed. Similarly, the taxa inventory showed a strong correspondence between the qualitative predictions of local fisherfolk and the quantitative analysis of non-cryptic species distribution, including their relative abundance and geophysical locations. Indigenous people's predictions about the presence or absence of fish in different benthic habitats corresponded 77% and 92% of the time (depending on scoring schema) with in situ visual measurements. These results demonstrate how incorporating local knowledge of benthic heterogeneity, existing biological communities, and particular spatio-temporal events of biological significance into a GIS database can corroborate the production of scientifically reliable base resource maps for designing MPAs in an environmentally and culturally sound fashion. This participatory approach was used to design and then establish MPAs in the Roviana and Vonavona region of the Western Solomon Islands. Under appropriate conditions, interdisciplinary work can complement the design of scientific fishery management and biodiversity conservation prescriptions for coastal Oceania.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Incorporating fishermen’s local knowledge and behavior into geographical information systems (GIS) for designing marine protected areas in Oceania
- Authors: Shankar, Aswani , Lauer, Matthew
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439109 , vital:73545 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.65.1.4y2q0vhe4l30n0uj"
- Description: Drawing on our experience in establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, this paper shows how a geographical information system (GIS) database can be used to incorporate sociospatial information, such as indigenous knowledge and artisanal fishing data, along with biophysical and other information to assist in MPA design. We argue that converting peoples’ knowledge and socioecological behavior into geo-spatial data allows researchers to formulate hypotheses regarding human responses to inter- and intra-habitat variability, along with other marine ecological processes, and help in the designing and implementation of resource management strategies in a cost-effective and participatory way, bridging the gap between indigenous and Western cognitions of seascapes. More generally, we show the significance of combining spatial tools, anthropological fieldwork, and social and natural science methods for studying artisanal fisheries with the goal of aiding the design of marine protected areas.
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- Date Issued: 2006