Biocultural Landscapes Research Articles

You Can't Grow Potatoes in the Sky: Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in the Potato Park of Cuzco, Peru

AbstractAlthough Quechua farmers contribute little to climate change, they are disproportionately experiencing the impacts of rapid changes in the high‐altitude environment of the Andes. We describe how Quechua farmers and Association ANDES, a local non‐profit organization, are rising to the challenge in Peru, using traditional knowledge and science in community‐led research to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. A globally important food crop, the potato (Solanum sp.) originated in the central Andean Mountains. Indigenous farmers collectively manage the Potato Park as a Biocultural Heritage Territory, and together with ANDES, are implementing the Pluriversity for Biocultural Landscapes and Resilient Food Systems to facilitate knowledge exchange and creative solution seeking for complex global problems such as climate change. We describe programs that support community resilience, local biocultural heritage, biocultural products and services, and global policy processes strengthening the rights of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and world indigenous peoples.

I Ka Wā Ma Mua: The Value of a Historical Ecology Approach to Ecological Restoration in Hawai‘i

Human activity has altered nearly every landscape on earth, and ecological restoration to repair degraded ecosystems has become a conservation necessity. Hawai‘i is a microcosm for intense landscape change, where levels of native biodiversity and threats to it are among the highest in the world, and where Kānaka Maoli (Hawai‘i's indigenous people), who stewarded these lands for a millennium, currently face massive inequalities. Consequently, biocultural restoration has emerged as a method to reciprocally restore ecological and cultural integrity and is especially applicable in Hawai‘i's sizeable invasivedominated areas. Since Kānaka Maoli are an inseparable part of every land and seascape in Hawai‘i, any ecological restoration project has the potential to use a biocultural restoration approach. However, most restoration approaches are purely ecological, and for many conservation practitioners a sociocultural understanding of the landscape can seem inaccessible. In this article, we discuss the value of a historical ecology approach (understanding the interaction between people and landscapes over time) for successful restoration and management of biocultural landscapes in Hawai‘i. We use a case study in Kahalu‘u, Kona, to outline historical ecology methods and available resources in Hawai‘i, including written documents, maps, imagery, archaeological studies, and interviews, and discuss applications of this approach on-the-ground. Potential benefits of employing this approach include expanding knowledge of reference conditions, understanding practices contributing to landscape function over space and time, and building meaningful relationships to engaging community around a site. We argue that a historical ecology approach is readily adoptable into ecological restoration in Hawai‘i, especially in its human-dominated landscapes.

Percepciones de la degradación ambiental entre vecinos y chinamperos del Lago de Xochimilco, México

La progresiva degradación ambiental del paisaje biocultural conformado en el Lago de Xochimilco ha puesto en riesgo la denominación del área como Sitio Patrimonio Mundial. La degradación ambiental del Lago de Xochimilco se debe, en buena parte, a la verticalidad en la implementación de proyectos productivos y medidas de conservación. Este artículo está basado en trabajo etnográfico y analiza las maneras en que los vecinos y productores agrícolas de la localidad perciben, entienden y asimilan las causas de la degradación ambiental del Lago de Xochimilco. Es importante reconocer estas percepciones con el fin de construir soluciones acordes con estas opiniones, haciéndolos partícipes en la toma de decisiones y en las acciones que se determinen. Sugerimos que cualquier esfuerzo subsecuente por preservar el área debe de tomar en cuenta los conocimientos y tecnologías locales existentes y subrayamos que de no hacerlo, el efecto de las políticas públicas de conservación seguirán generando efectos opuestos a los esperados.

Socioecological transition in the Cauca river valley, Colombia (1943–2010): towards an energy–landscape integrated analysis

Agroecosystems are facing a global challenge amidst a socioecological transition that places them in a dilemma between increasing land-use intensity to meet the growing demand of food, feed, fibres and fuels, while avoiding the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We applied an intermediate disturbance-complexity approach to the land-use changes of a Latin American biocultural landscape (Cauca river valley, Colombia, 1943–2010), which accounts for the joint behaviour of human appropriation of photosynthetic capacity used as a measure of disturbance, and a selection of land metrics that account for landscape ecological functionality. We also delved deeper into local land-use changes in order to identify the main socioeconomic drivers and ruling agencies at stake. The results show that traditional organic mixed-farming tended to disappear as a result of sugarcane intensification. The analysis confirms the intermediate disturbance-complexity hypothesis by showing a nonlinear relationship, where the highest level of landscape complexity (heterogeneity–connectivity) is attained when disturbance peaks at 50–60%. The study proves the usefulness of transferring the concept of intermediate disturbance to biocultural landscapes and suggests that conservation of heterogeneous and well-connected mixed-farming, with a positive interplay between intermediate level of disturbances and land-use complexity endowed with a rich intercultural heritage, will preserve a wildlife-friendly agro-ecological matrix likely to house high biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Applied Montology Using Critical Biogeography in the Andes

More than most other landforms, mountains have been at the vanguard of geographical inquiry. Whether promontories, cultural works on slopes, or even metaphorical/spiritual heights, mountain research informs current narratives of global environmental change. We review how montology shifts geographic paradigms via the novel approach of critical biogeography in the Andes. We use it to bridge nature and society through indigenous heritage, local biodiversity conservation narratives, and vernacular nature–culture hybrids of biocultural landscapes (BCLs), focusing on how socioecological systems (SES) enlighten scientific query in the Andes. In our Andean study cases, integrated critical frameworks guide the understanding of BCLs as the product of long-term human–environment interactions. With situated exemplars from place naming, wild edible plants, medicinal plants, sacred trees, foodstuffs, ritualistic plants, and floral and faunal causation, we convey the need for cognition of mountains as BCLs in the Anthropocene. We conclude that applied montology allows for a multi-method approach with the four Cs of critical biogeography, a model that engages forward-looking geographers and interdisciplinary Andeanists in assessments for sustainable development of fragile BCLs in the Andes.

Historical Land Use/Cover Changes and the Hemeroby Levels of a Bio-Cultural Landscape: Past, Present and Future

The urbanization of a campus landscape has required much space for this expansion, reinforcing the status of geographical space as a limited resource. We analyzed the effects of land cover change assessed over temporal dataset on composition and configuration dynamics of UFSCar (Federal University of Sao Carlos) campus landscape, based on a descriptive view of the hemeroby levels, over a 54-year period (1962-2016), in order to understand the impacts of past anthropogenic induced landscape change and inform decision making with regard to biodiversity management. The classification of land use/cover dynamics, over time, was obtained based on screen digitizing of aerial photos and LandSat imagery. An ordinal scale ranging from ahemerob to metahemerob was applied to assess the hemerobiotic state of each land use type. Currently, The UFSCar landscape campus configures a biocultural mosaic in different stages of hemeroby. Thus a campus landscape dynamics model, which can be denoted as “forestry-conservation-urban model”, anthropogenic landscape is replaced by natural one, later by land cover reflecting the spatial anthropization process. Through time, two hemerobiotic trajectories were identified, in which 1) an euhemerob landscape matrix is substituted by an ahemerob one, resulting in increased naturalness of the campus landscape, and then 2) metahemerob patch types will later on increasing as a consequence of ongoing urbanization. Expressive amount of ahemerob patches in campus landscape fulfills one of the conditions for maintenance of the capacity for self-regulation and sustainability of a biocultural landscape. This framework provides an essential tool supporting with essential information about current and historical landscape sustainability for campus landscape management and support decision making process. The main institutional challenge for campus landscape sustainable management lies in the balance between the competitors of the campus landscape matrix: conservation x urbanization.

Entanglements of Reciprocal Relations

We borrow our title from James Verinis’ review, this issue, of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's book, The Mushroom at the End of the World. This collection of articles highlights relationship (as idea and as lived reality) from different perspectives and in transition. One set of contributions invites us to explore emergent ideas about the concept of relationship as an organizing principle for the natural world, humans included. These pieces provide us with historical perspective on changing paradigms in science, research, culture, and politics, and ask us to imagine the world—and act in it—in ways that go beyond binary, mechanistic, and hierarchical modes of thought, focusing instead on relations of co-creation across species, things, and ideas. Another set of articles carefully traces the multi-scale webs of relationship that condition food security and production, cross-generational and border transitions, and species conservation. They, too, challenge the reader to understand problems often posed in binary oppositions (e.g., socioeconomic isolation vs. integration, production vs. conservation) through new formulations. In “From ‘Genetic Resources’ to ‘Ecosystems Services’: A Century of Science and Global Policies for Crop Diversity Conservation,” Marianna Fenzi and Christophe Bonneuil provide a history of changing ideas about crop biodiversity over the past century. They detail shifts from purely ‘resourcist’ views, “emphasizing crop genes as resources for economic exploitation,” to more relational and biocultural concepts “emphasizing ‘crop biodiversity’” as both product and goal of human-nature interactions. Highlighting the implications for industrial vs. smallholder agriculture, they provide important context for the emergence of farmer-centered research, and anthropology's key role in it, as highlighted in CAFE's special issue on the topic (2014: v36 issue 1) and by Price and Palis, this issue. Nicholas C. Kawa's contribution, “How Religion, Race, and the Weedy Agency of Plants Shape Amazonian Home Gardens” offers two intertwined theses: one, about the ways in which plants become associated with the histories of racialization and marginalization of particular human groups; the other, about how the “weedy agency” of plants complicates and defies these histories to shape the biocultural landscape in their own ways. Kawa's piece provides both method and insights for the challenges of analyzing the world in more relational and multi-species terms. Jean Gilruth-Rivera takes us on a historical journey on the vias of Mexico in “A Semi-Autonomous Mexican Peasant Community and Globalization: The Role of the Cacique (Broker) in Maintaining Traditional Agroecology.” She explores the relationships between traditional agroecological practices and isolation from global trade in Malinalco, in central Mexico. While the community's inaccessibility is often attributed to rough topography, in reality, it was a Cacique's opposition to roads that helped maintain traditional practices among peasants. In “Borders Out of Register: Edge Effects in the U.S.–Mexico Foodshed,” authors Laurel Bellante and Gary Paul Nabhan examine the effects of the geopolitical border on food safety and food waste. The concept of the foodshed, while useful, becomes complicated when it is bisected by the U.S.–Mexico border. The authors explore how border effects simultaneously create vulnerabilities, for example, when perceptions of Mexican produce cause heightened food safety scrutiny, as well as opportunities, such as salvaging food waste for emergency food aid, in the food system. In our final research article, Jessie K. Fly examines food security at the household level in “Shrimp Aquaculture, Social Capital, and Food Security in Rural Vietnam.” Market-based economic reforms have caused intensification of shrimp farming and contributed to out-migration of younger village members. Fly shows how this reduces elderly residents’ dietary diversity, and how social capital, long a strategy to ensure food security, has become unreliable. The article poignantly shows how agricultural modernization efforts often result in reduced food resources for those communities most intimately engaged in food production. In our research report section, Lisa Leimar Price and Florencia G. Palis document a little-known history of the critical role of anthropologists in creating spaces for agroecological and biocultural perspectives within the dominant science and research paradigms described elsewhere in this issue by Fenzi and Bonneuil. “Bringing Farmer Knowledge and Learning into Agricultural Research: How Agricultural Anthropologists Transformed Strategic Research at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)” shows how researchers engaged with major institutions to introduce methodological and conceptual innovations giving a key role to local human-nature interactions. Finally, in a combination of book review and philosophical essay, James P. Verinis conveys the challenging and innovative facets of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's book, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Weaving insights from anthropology, other reviews, wider intellectual trends, and his own ruminations, Verinis finds Tsing's work compelling in its encouragement to “transcend the confines of modern scientific thinking about ‘ourselves’ and ‘others’,” and in its novel take on nature as collaboration in both unexpected and obvious ways.

The Role of Rewilding in Landscape Design for Conservation

Rewilding means returning a non-wild area back to the wild. It implies a reduction or cessation of human control in favour of allowing nature to take care of itself. The concept originated in North America, where it was initially focused on reconnecting existing wilderness areas and re-establishing populations of large carnivores and other large vertebrates. The modern literature is dominated by European studies, however, in which rewilding is seen as a management option for the increasing areas of abandoned agricultural land. Although modern rewilding looks forward to a future wildness that is not necessarily the same as the past, evidence from past ecosystems gives inspiration and support for a hands-off approach. Late Pleistocene ecosystems provide a major challenge since they show the irreplaceable roles of the now largely extinct megafauna. Large-scale rewilding will benefit some charismatic large vertebrates, but probably at the expense of many disturbance-dependent species, with the overall impact likely to differ in different regions. Other potential problems include the loss of valued biocultural landscapes and an increase in human-wildlife conflicts. Benefits may include increased recreational opportunities, enhanced ecosystem services, and greater resilience, as well as less quantifiable social benefits and spiritual values. Rewilding science needs to catch up with rewilding practice, and there is an urgent need for replicated, large-scale, long-term experiments.

Evaluation of biocultural landscapes and associated ecosystem services in the region of Suğla Lake in Turkey

The purpose of this study was to evaluate biocultural landscapes and associated ecosystem services in the region of Suğla Lake located in Konya Province of Turkey. Method of the study includes four stages. In the first stage, the biodiversity function of landscapes was identified by overlapping the maps of flora and fauna and then it was evaluated by using a 1–5 score system. Second, the cultural diversity function of landscapes was evaluated by site survey and literature review. The obtained data were evaluated according to the 11 criteria by using a 1–4 score system. The analysed data were transferred on to the maps. Third, the biocultural landscapes were designated by overlapping the maps of the biodiversity and cultural diversity functions of landscapes. Finally, major ecosystem services provided by the biocultural landscapes were examined by assessing the collected data on the biodiversity and cultural diversity functions of landscapes and review of literature.

Do farmers use, and imitate, self-organizing resource-concentration mechanisms driven by non-human engineers in constraining environments? Biocultural landscapes and biomimicry at the ecosystem level

In a wide range of environments —but which all have in common the scarcity of some key resource that is crucial for life— there have emerged ecosystems that show remarkably regular spatial patterns in the distribution of vegetation, in topography, or both. These patterns have been shown to result from the activities of organisms that can be classed as “ecosystem engineers.” In these constraining environments, “engineer” organisms, acting in concert with physical mechanisms, convert an initially homogeneous landscape into a landscape composed of two kinds of patches, one kind in which the crucial resource is concentrated, the other kind in which the crucial resource is depleted. Thus, in environments where a crucial resource is generally scarce, engineer organisms create patches of habitat in which the resource is relatively abundant. This allows organisms to persist in environments that would otherwise be marginal (or worse) for their survival. The process by which this occurs is termed “spatial self-organization” and the phenomenon is called “self-organized patchiness.” In some of the environments where strikingly patterned, self-organized ecosystems occur, farmers construct cultural landscapes that are remarkably similar to the constructions of the “engineer” organisms. This resemblance between artefacts made by humans and constructions made by non-human living beings raises numerous questions. Does the resemblance reflect independent convergence on similar adaptive solutions to constraining environments, or do human and non-human engineers interact in one or more ways? The objective of this presentation is to explore these questions.

Shrines in Central Italy conserve plant diversity and large trees

Sacred natural sites (SNS) are instances of biocultural landscapes protected for spiritual motives. These sites frequently host important biological values in areas of Asia and Africa, where traditional resource management is still upheld by local communities. In contrast, the biodiversity value of SNS has hardly been quantitatively tested in Western contexts, where customs and traditions have relatively lost importance due to modernization and secularization. To assess whether SNS in Western contexts retain value for biodiversity, we studied plant species composition at 30 SNS in Central Italy and compared them with a paired set of similar but not sacred reference sites. We demonstrate that SNS are important for conserving stands of large trees and habitat heterogeneity across different land-cover types. Further, SNS harbor higher plant species richness and a more valuable plant species pool, and significantly contribute to diversity at the landscape scale. We suggest that these patterns are related not only to pre-existent features, but also to traditional management. Conservation of SNS should take into account these specificities, and their cultural as well as biological values, by supporting the continuation of traditional management practices.

Cultural values and sustainable forest management: the case of Europe

The European continent still has a rich heritage of rural landscapes built up over thousands of years. The UNESCO-sCBD Florence Declaration of 2014, describes it as being predominantly a biocultural landscape, as it assimilates economic, social, cultural, and environmental processes in time and space. This definition also includes the forests, which have been affected by several centuries of human action and are also a part of the European cultural heritage. However, an approach to forest landscapes often employing the same tools used for nature conservation has led to a definition of management tools mostly based on ecological characteristics. The origin of forests and woodlands is rarely interpreted as the result of human activities and protected and managed accordingly. The three pillars on which Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) in Europe are based are ecological values, economic values, and sociocultural values. However, no political resolutions requiring countries to develop strategies and carry out actions for the preservation of cultural forests have been developed so far. The fact that cultural values currently play a limited role in SFM indicates the scant consideration given to the role of culture and history, as well as the lack of a comprehensive landscape approach. Failure to effectively and coherently address culture and history may very well be an emerging weakness that needs to be reconciled, especially now that the landscape approach is proposed on a global scale as a new perspective for sustainable development. One of the consequences of this failure has been the widespread application of an idea of ‘naturalness’ to places that are not natural, threatening the conservation of the cultural identity of local populations and the historical values of forests, and favoring processes of abandonment and renaturalization. The present paper advocates the practical implementation of existing tools for protecting cultural forest landscapes, such as the MCPFE Guidelines for Social and Cultural Values in SFM and the UNESCO-sCBD Florence Declaration.

Genetic fallout in biocultural landscapes: molecular imperialism and the cultural politics of (not) seeing transgenes in Mexico.

This article explores the trajectory of the global controversy over the introgression (or not) of transgenes from genetically modified maize into Mexican indigenous maize landraces. While a plurality of knowledge-making processes were deployed to render transgenes visible or invisible, we analyze how a particular in vitro based DNA-centered knowledge came to marginalize other forms of knowledge, thus obscuring other bio-cultural dimensions key to the understanding of gene flow and maize diversity. We show that dominant molecular norms of proof and standards of detection, which co-developed with the world of industrial monocropping and gene patenting, discarded and externalized non-compliant actors (i.e. complex maize genomes, human dimensions of gene flow). Operating in the name of high science, they hence obscured the complex biological and cultural processes that maintain crop diversity and enacted a cultural-political domination over the world of Mexican landraces and indigenous communities.

Seeking synergy between community and state‐based governance for biodiversity conservation: The role of Indigenous and Community‐Conserved Areas in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

AbstractSabah in Malaysian Borneo contains a range of diverse ecosystems and some of the richest concentrations of biodiversity in the world. Yet the state's existing protected area network is too fragmented and of insufficient size to safeguard biodiversity in the long term. Experts have emphasised the need for a landscape level approach to shore up conservation areas through the creation of ecological corridors of compatible mixed use. In light of the 2003 Durban Accord which signalled a shift towards greater levels of community participation in conservation, this article features the efforts made by the state to explore the potential role of Indigenous and Community‐Conserved Areas (ICCAs) in strengthening biodiversity conservation. Selected case studies are used to showcase some of the ways ICCAs are already making important contributions to safeguarding ecological services and maintaining habitat connectivity in the state. Recognising the role of indigenous and local communities in sustaining Sabah's unique biocultural landscapes is a critical component of a long‐term approach to sustaining irreplaceable natural heritage. Sabah's legal framework actually contains sufficient provision for greater synergy between community and state‐based governance of biodiversity areas, yet aspects of Sabah's political economy must be addressed before this ideal can be realised.

Mapping in Epistemological Translation, Revising the Critique of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) as an Instrument of Cultural Assimilation

This paper examines some of the features that have made maps into an essential and traditional tool used by all those involved in the management of natural resources. A main competency of natural resource managers and geographers is map making, along with map reading and map usage, as it allows a vision to be constructed, aiding the understanding of bio-cultural ocean, riverine and landscapes and helping to put them into perspective. I argue that the prominence of mapping in natural resource management comes from a topokinetic quality of knowledge generation and a visual character of knowledge reproduction. I also argue that mapping is a pedagogical device not exclusive to western ontological tradition, and that these features have made mapping a favorite episte-mological translation tool.

Vernacular Taxonomy, Classification and Varietal Diversity of fig (Ficus carica L.) Among Jbala cultivators in Northern Morocco

Interactions between societies and their natural environment have led to the development of complex traditional agroecosystems with a high level of agrodiversity (Brookfield 2001) linked to landscape mosaics which favour sustainability (Perfecto and Vandermeer 2010). In the Mediterranean region, ecological and evolutionary interactions since the Neolithic between humans and biodiversity have produced coupled bio-cultural landscapes (Blondel 2006). Domestication in that region took place through selection of biological traits for a large diversity of crops including cereals, pulses and trees (Zohary and Spiegel-Roy 1975). Crop intraspecific diversity in traditional farming systems contributes to risk avoidance strategies through the selection of adapted agronomic properties. Crop diversity also relates to sociocultural values and functions such as food preferences, ceremonial uses, identity or patrimony (Gibson 2009; Heckler and Zent 2008), as well as levels of interest within each society among individuals (Emperaire and Peroni 2007) and the reproductive biology of specific crops. Mediterranean fruit trees are allogamous and vegetative propagation is a major method for selecting and maintaining advantageous traits (Zohary and Spiegel-Roy 1975). Feral or wild crop relatives of Ficus carica, Olea europaea or Castanea sativa are preserved in traditional agroecosystems for a variety of purposes ranging from religious to practical uses, favoring gene flow between the wild or feral and clonally propagated varieties. Sexual recombinations between wild, feral and clonally propagated varieties favor the emergence of new varieties (Aumeeruddy-Thomas 2010; Aumeeruddy-Thomas et al. 2012). Studies pertaining to other vegetatively propagated crops, especially tubers in tropical regions, demonstrate the complementary role of vegetative and sexual reproduction in producing new cultivars (Caillon et al. 2006; McKey et al. 2010). In the Mediterranean region, figs, olives, dates, grapes and almonds were the first perennial plant species to be domesticated (Zohary and Hopf 2000). Compared to the roles of cereals the importance of tree interspecific and intraspecific diversity for the development of Mediterranean societies has been little discussed (Bouby and Ruas 2012). The existence of 1275 olive cultivars described to date in the Mediterranean region (Bartolini et al. 1998) shows the importance of olive intraspecific diversity at the regional level. In Morocco, 194 fig and 60 olive genotypes are known (Khadari et al. 2008b; Achtak et al. 2010). Intraspecific diversity of fruit trees in the Mediterranean region has been attributed to their cultural, economic and religious importance since ancient times. Condit (1947) monograph on the fig provides a comprehensive account of the importance of Ficus carica in legends and folklore. The sociocultural importance of fruit trees is discussed by numerous authors in classical texts on agronomy (e.g., Plinius Natural History and Columnella De Re Rustica) and in historical and ethnobotanical studies (Gsell 1914; Bellakhdar 2003). Nevertheless, no comprehensive study examines the underlying sociocultural Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10745-012-9471-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.