The COVID-19 pandemic has affected various sectors of the global communities, including those that depend on forests for honey products. Furthermore, the dynamics of production and availability are completely affected by government restrictions. This study focuses on the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the forestry sector. Specifically, it examines the pandemic effect on forest honey farmers in habitat management, harvesting, marketing, farmer institutions, and livelihoods. The study was conducted on forest honey bee farmers through field observations and structured and in-depth interviews. Data were collected using five variables and 30 indicators in Fatumnasi Subdistrict, South Central Timor Regency and analyzed using descriptive and quantitative analysis. The results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the socio-cultural and economic utilization of forest honey. Additionally, social restrictions have reduced habitat management performance, farmers institutions and livelihoods, harvesting, and marketing. This has increased pressure on the livelihoods of forest honey bee farmers than before the pandemic. Moreover, it has directly affected their lives and the ability to provide quality forest honey. Therefore, interventions are needed to strengthen marketing and institutional networks to face the changes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the research field, smartphone began to be used for field data collection. One application that was used was KoBoCollect. This article shared the experience of using KoBoCollect in research on the socio-economic impact of blood diseases on banana in Sumba Island. The research was conducted by interviewing 64 banana farmers that spread proportionally in four regencies in Sumba Island. The use of KoBoCollect/toolbox made it easy to collect, save and manage research data. KoBoCollect/toolbox provided the advantages of conducting paperless research, able to record data in complex formats such as numeric data, descriptive data, photos, videos, sounds, coordinates and other data, dynamically making forms changes when conducting research, and displaying interactive applications. KoBoCollect can be run off-line, made it possible to collect field data in remote locations and no internet network. The research data was transmitted online so that the data tabulation process was automatic. Simple data analysis such as median values, mode, graphs and distribution maps of data collection were provided in KoBotoolbox. With KoBoCollect/toolbox, researchers quickly find out the results of the research, as in this research it was known that blood disease had an impact on the decrease in the banana population revealed by 81.54% of farmers.

Abstract. Riwu-Kaho M, Mella WII, Mau YS, Riwu-Kaho NPLB, Nur MSM. 2020. Water balance analysis of Talau-Loes Watershed, a cross border watershed of Indonesia and East Timor. Trop Drylands 21: 17-24. The Talau-Loes watershed is a cross-border watershed in Indonesia and Timor Leste (East Timor) which has traditionally been a natural resource for living, cultivation and conservation areas for communities in several districts of Belu Regency, Indonesia, and several areas in the Timor Leste territory. Water shortages in the land system are thought to play a significant role in the low productivity of agricultural crops. This study aimed to predict water balance in the Talau watershed, and to estimate river discharge in Malibaka Sub-watershed of Talau-Loes watershed. The study results showed that the amount of annual precipitation of 1679 mm was smaller than the total amount of water lost, amounting to 1914.79 mm per year, originating from evapotranspiration (ET) of 1650.91 mm and runoff water of 263.85 mm. Thus, theoretically, there would be an annual deficit of 235.79 mm in the Talau watershed. However, at the peak of the groundwater deficit, it turned out that the Malibaka River in the Malibaka sub-watershed and the Talau watershed had a discharge of 18 mm3/sec. This gives a clue about the ability of the groundwater level to gradually release its water reservoir as a source of base flow. Soil and water conservation actions that combine integrated systems such as agroforestry systems with mechanical conservation actions are proposed as solutions that need to be studied and developed in the future.