Using a social learning configuration to increase Vietnamese smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity to respond to climate change

Social learning is crucial for local smallholder farmers in developing countries to improve their adaptive capacity and to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. While it is widely acknowledged that social learning is a necessary condition for adaptation, few studies have systematically investigated under which conditions particular forms of social learning are most successful in improving adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable groups. This study aims to design, implement and evaluate a social learning configuration in a coastal community in Vietnam. We make use of various methods during four workshop-based interventions with local smallholder farmers: interviews with key farmers and commune leaders, farmer-to-farmer learning, participatory observations and focus group discussions. The methods for evaluation of social learning configuration include in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and structured survey interviews. Our findings show that the social learning configuration used in this study leads to an increased problem ownership, an enhanced knowledge-base with regard to climate change impacts and production adaptation options, improved ability to see connections and interdependencies and finally, strengthened relationships and social cohesion. The results suggest that increased social learning in the community leads to increase in adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers and improves both their economic and environmental sustainability. We discuss the key lessons for designing learning configurations that can successfully enhance adaptive capacity and smallholder farmers’ agency and responsiveness to the challenges posed by climate change impacts.     

Persistence and changes in the peripheral Beles basin of Ethiopia

We have investigated the relevance of the notion of “peripheralism” in the Beles basin. In this lowland border area of Ethiopia, important investments require an evaluation of their socio-economic and ecological impacts in the light of Ethiopia’s Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy. We contrasted literature of different periods with field observations. In the middle and lower parts of the basin, the Gumuz people traditionally practised shifting cultivation. Resettlement of highlanders is particularly linked to water and land resources. A large irrigation project was initiated in the 1980s, but vegetables and fruits face post-harvest losses. Large water transfers from Lake Tana since 2010 affect the movement of people, the hydrogeomorphology, and ecology of the river. In several parts of the basin, the settlers’ economy now dominates. Many Gumuz became sedentary but maintained their agricultural system, particularly in the south of the lower basin. Land titling allowed allocation of “vacant” areas to transnational or domestic investors. As a result, the semi-natural vegetation is frequently replaced by open cropland, leading to decreased carbon storage and increased soil erosion. This and water abstraction for irrigation jeopardise hydropower production, in contradiction with the CRGE objectives. Despite the recent developments, the contrasts in economic activity make the core-periphery dichotomy to remain actual in the Beles basin. The resettlements and permanent cropping tend to make the upper basin part of the core. However, the installation of a transit road and commercial farms in the lower basin do not allow to consider that a non-peripheral integration has taken place.     

Successful combination of remediation techniques at a former silver factory

A residential area that was formerly part of a silver factory site severely contaminated with chlorinated solvents was remediated using an in situ electro‐bioreclamation technique. Electro‐bioreclamation is a method for heating soil and groundwater combined with soil vapor and low‐yield groundwater extraction and enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD). During the first two years of remediation in the source area (the intensive phase), a total of 80 kg of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was removed by heating combined with ERD. After another two years of ERD in the source and plume areas (the attenuation phase), the VOC concentrations were reduced to a level below 100 μg/L in groundwater. Given these satisfying results, electro‐reclamation in combination with ERD turned out to be a successful in situ remediation technique for removing VOCs. © 2006Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Knowledge co‐production and boundary work to promote implementation of conservation plans

Knowledge co‐production and boundary work offer planners a new frame for critically designing a social process that fosters collaborative implementation of resulting plans. Knowledge co‐production involves stakeholders from diverse knowledge systems working iteratively toward common vision and action. Boundary work is a means of creating permeable knowledge boundaries that satisfy the needs of multiple social groups while guarding the functional integrity of contributing knowledge systems. Resulting products are boundary objects of mutual interest that maintain coherence across all knowledge boundaries. We examined how knowledge co‐production and boundary work can bridge the gap between planning and implementation and promote cross‐sectoral cooperation. We applied these concepts to well‐established stages in regional conservation planning within a national scale conservation planning project aimed at identifying areas for conserving rivers and wetlands of South Africa and developing an institutional environment for promoting their conservation. Knowledge co‐production occurred iteratively over 4 years in interactive stake‐holder workshops that included co‐development of national freshwater conservation goals and spatial data on freshwater biodiversity and local conservation feasibility; translation of goals into quantitative inputs that were used in Marxan to select draft priority conservation areas; review of draft priority areas; and packaging of resulting map products into an atlas and implementation manual to promote application of the priority area maps in 37 different decision‐making contexts. Knowledge co‐production stimulated dialogue and negotiation and built capacity for multi‐scale implementation beyond the project. The resulting maps and information integrated diverse knowledge types of over 450 stakeholders and represented >1000 years of collective experience. The maps provided a consistent national source of information on priority conservation areas for rivers and wetlands and have been applied in 25 of the 37 use contexts since their launch just over 3 years ago. When framed as a knowledge co‐production process supported by boundary work, regional conservation plans can be developed into valuable boundary objects that offer a tangible tool for multi‐agency cooperation around conservation. Our work provides practical guidance for promoting uptake of conservation science and contributes to an evidence base on how conservation efforts can be improved.     

Application of soft computing to predict water quality in wetland

Prediction of water quality is a critical issue because of its significant impact on human and ecosystem health. This research aims to predict water quality index (WQI) for the free surface wetland using three soft computing techniques namely, adaptive neuro-fuzzy system (ANFIS), artificial neural networks (ANNs), and group method of data handling (GMDH). Seventeen wetland points for a period of 14 months were considered for monitoring water quality parameters including conductivity, suspended solid (SS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), ammoniacal nitrogen (AN), chemical oxygen demand (COD), dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, pH, phosphate nitrite, and nitrate. The sensitivity analysis performed by ANFIS indicates that the significant parameters to predict WQI are pH, COD, AN, and SS. The results indicated that ANFIS with Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE = 0.9634) and mean absolute error (MAE = 0.0219) has better performance to predict the WQI comparing with ANNs (NSE = 0.9617 and MAE = 0.0222) and GMDH (NSE = 0.9594 and MAE = 0.0245) models. However, ANNs provided a comparable prediction and the GMDH can be considered as a technique with an acceptable prediction for practical purposes. The findings of this study could be used as an effective reference for policy makers in the field of water resource management. Decreasing variables, reduction of running time, and high speed of these approaches are the most important reasons to employ them in any aquatic environment worldwide.

     

Learning and the transformative potential of citizen science

The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. We examined the transformative capacity of citizen science in particular learning through environmental CS as conservation tool. We reviewed the CS and social‐learning literature and examined 14 conservation projects across Europe that involved collaborative CS. We also developed a template that can be used to explore learning arrangements (i.e., learning events and materials) in CS projects and to explain how the desired outcomes can be achieved through CS learning. We found that recent studies aiming to define CS for analytical purposes often fail to improve the conceptual clarity of CS; CS programs may have transformative potential, especially for the development of individual skills, but such transformation is not necessarily occurring at the organizational and institutional levels; empirical evidence on simple learning outcomes, but the assertion of transformative effects of CS learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation; and it is unanimous that learning in CS is considered important, but in practice it often goes unreported or unevaluated. In conclusion, we point to the need for reliable and transparent measurement of transformative effects for democratization of knowledge production.     

Parentage analyses suggest female promiscuity and a disadvantage for athletic males in the colour-polymorphic lizard Podarcis melisellensis

Although laboratory measurements of whole-animal performance have become a standard tool in evolutionary biology, if and how interindividual variation in performance translates into differential fitness remains poorly understood. Particularly rare are studies that have connected performance to mating and reproductive success in the field. In this study, we use DNA microsatellite parentage analyses to study the fitness gradient in a colour-polymorphic lizard, Podarcis melisellensis. We report on two surprising findings. First, contrary to our expectations, individual sprint speed and bite force capacity correlated negatively, not positively, with male mating and reproductive success. Second, we found an unexpected degree of promiscuity in females. Also, contrary to traditional parental investment theory, the variation in mating success and reproductive success was as high in females as in males. Our results call for a better integration of whole-animal performance and life history traits, and for a reconsideration of the ideas on the likeliness of sexual selection acting on female phenotypes.     

Top-down control inhibits spatial self-organization of a patterned landscape

Regular, self-organized spatial patterns in primary producers have been described in a wide range of ecosystems and are predicted to affect community production and resilience. Although consumers are abundant in most systems, the effect of trophic interactions on pattern formation in primary producers remains unstudied. We studied the effects of top-down control by herbivores on a self-organized landscape of regularly spaced, diatom-covered hummocks alternating with water-filled hollows on an intertidal mudflat in The Netherlands. Spatial patterns developed during spring but were followed by a rapid collapse in summer, leading to a flat landscape with low diatom densities and little variation in sediment bed level. This dramatic decline co-occurred with a gradual increase of benthic herbivores. A manipulative field experiment, where benthic herbivores were removed from the sediment, revealed that both diatom growth and hummock formation were inhibited by the activity of benthic herbivores. Our study provides clear evidence of top-down control of spatial self-organized patterns by benthic herbivores within a biological-geomorphic landscape.