Integrative geospatial modeling: combining local and indigenous knowledge with geospatial applications for adaptive governance of invasive species and ecosystem services

Includes bibliographical references.2015 Summer.With an unprecedented rate of global change, diverse anthropogenic disturbances present growing challenges for coupled social-ecological systems. Biological invasions are one such disturbance known to cause negative impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and an array of other natural processes and human activities. Maps facilitated by advanced geospatial applications play a major role in resource management and conservation planning. However, local and indigenous knowledge are overwhelmingly left out of these conversations, despite the wealth of observational data held by resource-dependent communities and the potential negative impacts biological invasions have on local livelihoods. My integrative geospatial modeling research applied adaptive governance mechanisms of knowledge integration and co-production processes in concert with species distribution modeling tools to explore the potential threat of invasive plants to community-defined ecosystem services. Knowledge integration at the landscape scale in Alaska provided an important opportunity for re-framing risk assessment mapping to include Native Alaskan community concerns, and revealed the growing potential threat posed by invasive aquatic Elodea spp. to Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and whitefish (Coregonus nelsonii) subsistence under current and future climate conditions. Knowledge integration and co-production at the local scale in northeastern Ethiopia facilitated shared learning between pastoral communities and researchers, leading to the discovery of invasive rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora), which was previously unknown to my research team or a number of government and aid organizations working in the region, thus providing a potentially robust early detection and monitoring approach for an invasive plant that holds acute negative impacts on a number of endemic ecosystem service-providing trees. This work revealed knowledge integration and co-production processes and species distribution modeling tools to be complimentary, with invasive species acting as a useful boundary-spanning issue for bringing together diverse knowledge sources. Moreover, bridging and boundary-spanning organizations and individuals enhanced this rapid appraisal process by providing access to local and indigenous communities and fostered a level of built-in trust and legitimacy with them. Challenges to this work still remain, including effectively working at broad spatial and governance scales, sustaining iterative processes that involve communities in validating and critiquing model outputs, and addressing underlying power disparities between stakeholder groups. Top-down, discipline-specific approaches fail to adequately address the complexity of ecosystems or the needs of resource-dependent communities. My work lends evidence to the power of integrative geospatial modeling as a flexible transdisciplinary methodology for addressing conservation efforts in rural regions with mounting anthropogenic pressures at different spatial and governance scales

Hidden aspects of participation: reflections on the costs and benefits of a participatory mapping process for communities and researchers alike in Afar, Ethiopia

With research agendas often driving participatory mapping activities, building trust with participants is essential to the participatory mapping process, especially if it is initiated and/or facilitated from outside of the community. Without trust, the mapping will not be authentic and may never happen at all. However, despite the best intentions, participatory mapping processes initiated by outsiders can still result in an extractive undertaking of knowledge co-option, even when local communities receive some measure of benefits. This reflection piece offers a postscript to published research on a participatory mapping project in Ethiopia's Afar region (Luizza 2015; Luizza et al. 2016) but provides added context and critical reflection on the participatory mapping process not fully addressed in these previous works. This effort highlights a well-intentioned research project that through a narrow focus on "knowledge integration" at the expense of "knowledge co-production", overlooked important opportunities for building trust with community participants, leading to a level of misalignment of research goals and community needs. Although outsiders caring about community concerns and amplifying their voices was appreciated, what participating communities really needed were tangible resources and guidance for removing problematic invasive species that I as the researcher and participatory mapping facilitator was there to learn about from them. Honesty, transparency, and reliability are key attributes that a participatory mapping facilitator should always strive to embody throughout the mapping process, which should not be rushed (i.e., pre-mapping community engagement, onsite participatory mapping process, and post-mapping actions). This includes communities and facilitators being on the same page, as co-equal partners, about what participatory mapping is and the purpose and goals of this important approach

Local Knowledge of Plants and Their Uses Among Women in the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia

Women’s local ecological knowledge (LEK) is noted by many scholars to be unique and important for local conservation and development planning. Although LEK integration is inherent to ethnobotanical research, in Ethiopia, the knowledge-gender link has not been fully explored, and few studies focus on women’s distinct plant knowledge. We catalogued rural women’s knowledge of a wide range of plant uses in south-central Ethiopia, conducted through picture identification of 337 local plants. Fifty-seven plant species were identified, constituting 38 families, with the top five families being Lamiaceae, Solanaceae, Asteraceae, Rosaceae, and Pteridaceae. An array of uses were identified ranging from food, livestock and wildlife forage, to honey production and cosmetics. The most prevalent use noted (nearly 70%) was human medicine. This study reveals the important contribution of rural women’s plant knowledge in the Bale Mountains, and the potential benefits of including this gender-distinct understanding of local flora in community-based conservation planning