Biological Monitoring in the Amazon: Recent Progress and Future Needs

Ferraz, Gonçalo; Marinelli, Carlos Eduardo; Lovejoy, Thomas Ε.

doi:10.1111/j.1744-7429.2007.00355.x

Cited by 27 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For each activity, the weekly household quantities of all resources collected or produced were recorded, together with their ultimate use (consumed locally or sold), values and markets for traded goods. In the interest of comparability, these questionnaires were based on those used in a biological monitoring programme including several protected areas within the State of Amazonas (Ferraz et al 2008). The time interval of data collection varied between communities, and some weekly data were missing due to absences of monitoring personnel.…”

Section: Weekly Household Surveysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of livelihood strategy variation in two extractive reserves in Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

2011

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SUMMARYExtractive reserves account for a significant proportion of the remaining intact forest within Brazilian Amazonia. Managers of extractive reserves need to understand the livelihood strategies adopted by rural Amazonians in order to implement projects that benefit the livelihoods of local residents whilst maintaining forest integrity. Whilst resident populations are often descended from immigrant rubber-tappers, dynamic economic and social conditions have led to a recent diversification of land-use practices. This two-year study in two large contiguous extractive reserves encompassing both unflooded (terra firme) and seasonally flooded (várzea) forest, shows the degree to which local livelihood strategies of different settlements are heterogeneous. Extractive offtake of forest products and fish catches and agricultural activities, together with income from sales, for 82 households in 10 communities were quantified in detail by means of weekly surveys. The survey data were combined with interviews to examine the demographic and wealth profile, and engagement in alternative activities, in 181 households across 27 communities. All households and communities were engaged in all three subsistence activity types, but there was large variation in engagement with income-generating activities. Households within a community showed considerable congruence in their income-generating activity profiles, but there was significant variation between communities. Yields from agriculture and fishing were more temporally stable than extraction of highly-seasonal forest products. Generalized linear mixed models showed that forest type was consistently important in explaining yields of both agrarian and extractive products. Communities with greater access to terra firme forest were inherently more agricultural, and strongly committed to manioc production. Communities with greater access to flooded forest, however, showed a greater dependence on fishing. Conservation should be more attuned to the diversity and dynamism of livelihood strategies in protected areas; in particular, reserve managers and policy

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Section: Weekly Household Surveysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of livelihood strategy variation in two extractive reserves in Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

2011

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“…ProBUC was developed by the Amazonas state government Center for Protected Areas as a community-based monitoring system based on three main principles (Marinelli et al 2007, Ferraz et al 2008, Fonseca Junior et al 2011: (1) …”

Section: Biodiversity and Natural Resource Use Monitoring Program Formentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Constantino¹,

Carlos²,

Ramalho³

et al. 2012

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Biological resource monitoring systems are implemented in many countries and often depend on the participation of local people. It has been suggested that these systems empower local participants while promoting conservation. We reviewed three wildlife monitoring systems in indigenous lands and sustainable development reserves in Brazilian Amazonia and one in Namibian Caprivi conservancies, analyzing the strategies adopted and conditions that facilitated local empowerment, as well as potential impacts on conservation. This provided insights into potential avenues to strengthen empowerment outcomes of monitoring systems in Latin America and Africa. We assessed four dimensions of empowerment at individual and community scales: psychological, social, economic, and political. The conditions that facilitated local empowerment included the value of natural resources, rights to trade and manage resources, political organization of communities, and collaboration by stakeholders. The wide range of strategies to empower local people included intensifying local participation, linking them to local education, feeding information back to communities, purposefully selecting participants, paying for monitoring services, marketing monitored resources, and inserting local people into broader politics. Although communities were socially and politically empowered, the monitoring systems more often promoted individual empowerment. Marketing of natural resources promoted higher economic empowerment in conservancies in Namibia, whereas information dissemination was better in Brazil because of integrated education programs. We suggest that practitioners take advantage of local facilitating conditions to enhance the empowerment of communities, bearing in mind that increasing autonomy to make management decisions may not agree with international conservation goals. Our comparative analysis of cases in Latin America and Africa allows for a greater understanding of the relationships between resource monitoring systems, local empowerment, and conservation.

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“…At the moment, many citizen monitoring programs, combined with good data availability, are contributing more to our understanding of global phenomena, such as climate change, than are more scientific programs (Schmeller et al 2009), despite criticisms from academics (e.g. Ferraz et al 2008). We professional scientists need to learn from the amateurs, and incorporate planning, standardization, and data availability, while maintaining the flexibility that uncertainty demands.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty and the design of in-situ biodiversity-monitoring programs

Haila

Henle²,

Apostolopoulou³

et al. 2014

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Citation: Magnusson WE (2014) Uncertainty and the design of in-situ biodiversity-monitoring programs. Nature Conservation 8: 77-94. doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.8.5929 AbstractThere are many techniques to deal with uncertainty when modeling data. However, there are many forms of uncertainty that cannot be dealt with mathematically that have to be taken into account when designing a biodiversity monitoring system. Some of these can be minimized by careful planning and quality control, but others have to be investigated during monitoring, and the scale and methods adjusted when necessary to meet objectives. Sources of uncertainty include uncertainty about stakeholders, who will monitor, what to sample, where to sample, causal relationships, species identifications, detectability, distributions, relationships with remote sensing, biotic concordance, complementarity, validity of stratification, and data quality and management. Failure to take into account any of these sources of uncertainty about how the data will be used can make monitoring nothing more than monitoring for the sake of monitoring, and I make recommendations as to how to reduce uncertainties. Some form of standardization is necessary, despite the multiple sources of uncertainty, and experience from RAPELD and other monitoring schemes indicates that spatial standardization is viable and helps reduce many sources of uncertainty.

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Biological Monitoring in the Amazon: Recent Progress and Future Needs

Abstract: Abstracts in Spanish and Portuguese are available at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/btp.

Cited by 27 publications

References 16 publications

Determinants of livelihood strategy variation in two extractive reserves in Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

Determinants of livelihood strategy variation in two extractive reserves in Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Uncertainty and the design of in-situ biodiversity-monitoring programs

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