Traditional Ecological Knowledge

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Returning fire to the land: Celebrating traditional knowledge and fire

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In this webinar, Frank Lake, Research Ecologist with the Pacific Southwest Research Station will present findings from workshops held in 2012 and 2014 to investigate how traditional and western knowledge can be used to enhance wildland fire and fuels management and research. The workshops engaged tribal members, managers, and researchers to identify challenges and formulate solutions regarding cross-jurisdictional work, fuel reduction strategies, and wildland fire management and research involving lands important to tribes. A key conclusion from the workshops is that successful management of wildland fire and fuels requires collaborative partnerships that share traditional and western fire knowledge through culturally sensitive consultation, coordination, and communication for building trust. Dr. Lake will present a framework for developing these partnerships based on workshop discussions.

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Using narrative stories to understand Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Great Basin

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This pilot project used a method of naïve interviewing with tribal youths to gather narrative “micro stories” from elders and key tribal members and then answering a series of carefully constructed questions that allow participants to apply context and meaning to their stories. These questions were then analyzed quantitatively using correlational statistics to identify key themes and patterns across the narrative dataset. Webinar speaker is Tamara Wall, Desert Research Institute

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Returning fire to the land – Celebrating traditional knowledge and fire

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For this study, researchers organized two workshops to investigate how traditional and western knowledge can be used to enhance wildland fire and fuels management and research. Tribal members, managers, and researchers were engaged to formulate solutions regarding the main topics identified as important to tribal and other land managers: cross-jurisdictional work, fuels reduction strategies, and wildland fire management and research involving traditional knowledge. A key conclusion from the workshops is that successful management of wildland fire and fuels requires collaborative partnerships that share traditional and western fire knowledge through culturally sensitive consultation, coordination, and communication for building trust. We present a framework for developing these partnerships based on workshop discussions.

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Opportunities to utilize traditional phenological knowledge to support adaptive management of social-ecological systems vulnerable to changes in climate and fire regimes

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This study was designed to contribute to the limited literature describing the benefits of better integrating indigenous knowledge (IK) with other sources of knowledge in making adaptive-management decisions. Specifically, we advocate the integration of traditional phenological knowledge (TPK), a subset of IK, and highlight opportunities for this knowledge to support policy and practice of adaptive management with reference to policy and practice of adapting to uncharacteristic fire regimes and climate change in the western United States.

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Science and traditional ecological knowledge strategic plan

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The Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Strategic Plan guides the Great Basin LCC’s science program over a three to five year period (2015-2019). The plan outlines the LCC’s priority topics and how they will be updated, describes the process to determine annual focal topics and activities, and outlines how the LCC will implement, evaluate and adjust the science program.

Priority topics are:

  • Adaptation to changes in water availability, temperature, climate variability, and extreme climatic events
  • Adaptation to changes in ecosystem structure, processes, function, and interactions

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