Actually the post with it main heading intact is basically related to traditional knowledge which is proved to be true very precise in predicting hazards, disaster etc. but except a few almost all scientists look down on even a person mentioning traditional knowledge. I was once snubbed and laughed out by scientists when I mentioned this word in meeting on disaster management. It is because only a few articles are published on this topic in science journals so far. But, being a villager I know that traditional knowledge is transferred from generation to generation with their own experience of the just preceding. I seldom fond observed a failure.

Therefore, to know about niche of plants, their properties etc. ethnobotanists have to live with community like ethnographers and cultural anthropologists. The same approach is adopted by those who want to know ethnomedicine practices and preparation (sometimes it leads to litigation or violation of intellectual rights).

Similar, approach should be adopted by interested in local consequences of climate change. Rajna is true in pointing out,"Using social science methods, local climate change impacts can be documented. People may not respond to the questions such as has climate changed over the past? but they will definitely respond to questions such as is rainfall enough for agriculture at present? What changes have taken place in the occurrence of rainfall? etc." But, they shall also tell you about temperature change and increased frequency of extreme events. Obviously, all this can be done in the form of statement and through qualitative analysis some consistent theme may be recognised as they may reoccur several times. These using mixed methods they may be analysed.

From my boyhood when the so-called green revolution did not root in India, villagers anticipating by natural signs vegetative, temperature, wind condition and direction, direction of birds flight a good monsoon used to cultivate up low-lying land for the cultivation of rice and in case of anticipation of bad monsoon first uplands used to be cultivated for drought resisting coarse grains as millets. Lowland used to be cultivated when water was available from small rainfall for puddling to raise rice.

I am still in touch with my village and find that people before purchasing rice and wheat seeds do not forget to ask the question either from extension officer or sellers whether the crop will withstand small and irregular water supply.

I do know the project taken in tribal areas or remote part of Africa or other developing and poor countries may face several barriers as language, confidence winning, then being so close to ask some probing questions. It is especially among communities which guard violently their traditional knowledge.

Though, it would require considerable spending, time, also may involve spying and bribery, one has to accept this challenge for the human well being.

I suppose in a fluid physical situation where human responses, observations and change registered in cognition, at first qualitative analysis, in the second stage, mixed methods and finally social science numerical methodology may be used as hard science has failed to deliver on this count.

Using social science methods, local climate change impacts can be documented. People may not respond to the questions such as has climate changed over the past? but they will definitely respond to questions such as is rainfall enough for agriculture at present? What changes have taken place in the occurrence of rainfall? etc. Few places of Nepal where I asked similar questions, farmers responded saying that rainfall frequency was decreasing but also, increasing intensity over the monsoon. However, documentation and analysis of such incidences is sporadic and limited.

Your study may be more of social science since you will be dealing with community knowledge and practices. You will therefore need to get the information from the community itself through the various tools available. If it is on natural ecosystems, vegetation maps showing climatic changes have been used. I know of a group carrying out such study in Africa.

Actually the post with it main heading intact is basically related to traditional knowledge which is proved to be true very precise in predicting hazards, disaster etc. but except a few almost all scientists look down on even a person mentioning traditional knowledge. I was once snubbed and laughed out by scientists when I mentioned this word in meeting on disaster management. It is because only a few articles are published on this topic in science journals so far. But, being a villager I know that traditional knowledge is transferred from generation to generation with their own experience of the just preceding. I seldom fond observed a failure.

Therefore, to know about niche of plants, their properties etc. ethnobotanists have to live with community like ethnographers and cultural anthropologists. The same approach is adopted by those who want to know ethnomedicine practices and preparation (sometimes it leads to litigation or violation of intellectual rights).

Similar, approach should be adopted by interested in local consequences of climate change. Rajna is true in pointing out,"Using social science methods, local climate change impacts can be documented. People may not respond to the questions such as has climate changed over the past? but they will definitely respond to questions such as is rainfall enough for agriculture at present? What changes have taken place in the occurrence of rainfall? etc." But, they shall also tell you about temperature change and increased frequency of extreme events. Obviously, all this can be done in the form of statement and through qualitative analysis some consistent theme may be recognised as they may reoccur several times. These using mixed methods they may be analysed.

From my boyhood when the so-called green revolution did not root in India, villagers anticipating by natural signs vegetative, temperature, wind condition and direction, direction of birds flight a good monsoon used to cultivate up low-lying land for the cultivation of rice and in case of anticipation of bad monsoon first uplands used to be cultivated for drought resisting coarse grains as millets. Lowland used to be cultivated when water was available from small rainfall for puddling to raise rice.

I am still in touch with my village and find that people before purchasing rice and wheat seeds do not forget to ask the question either from extension officer or sellers whether the crop will withstand small and irregular water supply.

I do know the project taken in tribal areas or remote part of Africa or other developing and poor countries may face several barriers as language, confidence winning, then being so close to ask some probing questions. It is especially among communities which guard violently their traditional knowledge.

Though, it would require considerable spending, time, also may involve spying and bribery, one has to accept this challenge for the human well being.

Alice, could you share any written report/paper/account from that group you know works in Africa?

Interesting question, it would contribute to stepping forward by including mass people, who are not technically "Climate Expert" but have a lot of real life experience. The proper approach for retrieving the information at most from these mass groups, farmers for example, is in my opinion the "Participatory Rural Appraisal" (PRA, http://books.google.de/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RUlP-f2lRPcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=participatory+rural+appraisal&ots=SFjjopp2Sr&sig=6F_CJRTxDUY91Zp8HJRtB6Bvfv0). This of course lead to the social science but it would enable you to ensure the highest contribution from the mass groups in terms of climate change consequences in their daily means of earning bread. Attempts have so far been successful in similar aspects.

There is a vast literature from anthropology and human geography that documents local experiences with and responses to climate variability. Because social dynamics respond in a relatively quick time scale, it if sometimes difficult to discern the climate change signal (as distinguished from climate variability), but if you are primarily interested in the social processes of adaptation, I don't think this distinction is terribly important.

Human adaptation to climate change is a process of adapting to changing ranges of variability. This can be documented in a variety of ways, but broadly speaking, they are basically rooted in ethnographic methods of being there, observing what people do, as well as talking with and listening to them.

We made an interesting experience in central Italy trying to integrate the local knowledge into phisical monitoring of drought. Local knowledge was assessed by interviews to stakeholders such as farmers, fishers and other users, then analysed through fuzzy modeling. Please refer to a very recent paper from me and co-authors Giordano and Romano on Nat.Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-013-0724-9. Published on line a few days ago...

Dear colleagues, thank you very much for all your really interesting suggestions. Actually, I am not very familiar with social scientific methods, especially “fuzzy modeling”. But I see a great potential of using this type of methods for measuring and analyzing “hard” scientific facts, especially in the area of geography and biology.

Todd, I see your point about difficulty in discerning climate change from its variation... land use history and introduction of new science-based agricultural technologies also add variability. Controlling for all these factors probably is a challenge, but if I got it right from the suggested references, it is still possible to see the responses of population to climate change or at least long-term variability?

Interesting!! Question and as well as the discussion, thanks to all.

Yes, knowledge of the community can be harvested and they can be incorporate in a GIS. Now, things to consider is how? How to elicit those knowledge, well, they can be collected by questionnaire and in-depth interviews. Some expert knowledge can be added and then to document those in the system.

To avoid contamination of other factors like el-ninio, la-nina; technological influences; LU change....., they need to be screened after collecting data onsite.

I think it is possible to see changes in response to climate change/variability, but it is difficult and ultimately undesirable to factor out other drivers of change. As argued in several of my publications, if we start with the premise that adaptation is a real, on-going socio-technical process, then factoring out climate variability from climate change, or factoring out non-climate variables from climate variables, is a useless and misguided effort. Instead, it makes more sense to take an integrative and holistic perspective on adaptation/change as a process that take place in real places and in complex ways.

I have sometimes met resistence to this perspective amongst global systems modelers, because implies that models are not the central reference point for adaptation. This is not to say that they are without use, but that we need to identify their utility within the context of real ongoing adaptation processes.

In South Africa there has been quite a growth in the field of "Ethno-Ecology", and it is taken quite seriously as a science but most open-minded scientists. There are a few stick-in-the-muds who still rank it as Social Science, and do not believe in the integrity of the understanding of processes by 'Uneducated villagers'. The information they store is of absolute importance. Particularly as many of these people are a lot closer to nature in that their entire livelihood depends on the time of rainfall, the occurrence of pests, weeds, disease etc, they notice tiny fluctuations that may be overlooked by an outsider or "armchair scientist" .

What I feel is particularly important when making use of traditional knowledge is to respect their intellectual property and tribal customs. Always approach the head of the village first, and don't broadly publish information which may be sensitive or that could be exploited by other parties if it is made widely known.

Better to look into " Permaculture" to get alternative solutions.

Thank you for a nice citation Kennet! I take it! :)

Dear Ayadi, what you say it is very significant... could you give any references or cite any published document on that please?

Hello Zaal,

working in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and then as a regular visitor in the 2000s the Community Development team I was part of or working alongside was addressing consequnces of El Ninio events and resulting famines, particularly the drought of 1997,

Being already aware of reported changes in the altitudes at which different food crop varieties were beginning to grow and fruit or fruit more frequently the team was able to open up the issue of change and offer Cimate Change to participants in Ecology Workshops as a framework for understanding and linking the ecological knowledge of agricultural practice

We were running workshops for the purpose of making people aware of climate change, their need for an active agroforesty response of planting trees in and around new gardens as opposed to traditional passive agroforestry by allowing growth of secondary forest in fallow garden sites. So we were not undertaking climate change research

However, in the Highlands one could readily carry our participatory agroecological research by systematically recording participants awareness of changes in the limits of altitude at which varieties of food crops such as pineapple, sugar cane, red pandanus and yams were fruiting and the length of growing period to maturity for a range of sweet potatoe varieties

A team could do this with participants over the watersheds in a single district each with its own range of altitudes, rainfalls and usual level of insolation.

I suspect participants would also have knowledge about changing patterns of fallow regrowth, particularly lower altitude species pioneering further up the ridges.

Moreover, they are very aware of a changing history of new feral weeds entering their watersheds

I think these approaches would fit well with documenting a dynamic knowledge of agricultural practice and ecological observation which Highlanders in PNG are now actively relating to Climate Change

Ben Heyward

A few years ago, we visited a Mi'kmaq community (north american first nations) and I was impressed at their level of observation of wildlife and plants and all the changes they could list over the past decades. Although not structured in a scientific way, people with that kind of proximity experience with the natural world have a head start on most scientists who study it, also because through oral transmission by elders, the observation span goes back a long way, which is rarely the case with scientific projects which happen over a few years. One of my colleagues did a study with coastal community residents and it turns out that all their observations of changes in the environment (weather, temperatures, ice, species, etc.), were in accordance with scientific observations in the same area. I agree with you all that local and traditional knowledge should not be dismissed as a valuable source of information. Often, like in the rural areas in Haïti, it is the only reliable information at hand, probably more accurate than poorly gathered instrumental readings. I could see some potential biases, like for example if people do not believe in the existence of climate change, they will be more likely to downplay observations in changes in weather or temperatures they have witnessed, but that probably is rather rare occurrence, but I don't know the literature enough to judge on that.

This is great feedback to my question, Ben, thank you very much.

Was any report or publication produced based on those data?

Sebastian, those are great news to me... Thank you. You wrote: "One of my colleagues did a study with coastal community residents and it turns out that all their observations of changes in the environment (weather, temperatures, ice, species, etc.), were in accordance with scientific observations in the same area" - is that published? if so, could you pass me a reference please?