Indigenous Mapping for Integrating Traditional Knowledge to Enhance Community-Based Vegetation Management and Conservation: The Kumeyaay Basket Weavers of San José de la Zorra, México

Abstract

Kumeyaay people were historically hunter-gatherers with a strong relationship with their natural resources. Due to various processes, such as missionary colonization, agrarian reform, and the definition of the border between the USA and Mexico in 1838, the Indigenous populations faced reduced mobility within their territory and modified their lifestyles, highly related to landscape and plants. One of their strong traditional practices associated with plant resources, basket-making, has likewise changed. Today, this activity is one of the most important sources of income for many of the families in the community. Nevertheless, this is being now threatened by the loss of vegetation cover, from which they obtain primary basket-making material and is now far from being environmentally and economically sustainable. An interdisciplinary group is addressing this problem from a multidisciplinary perspective and through a participatory methodological approach based on community mapping to enable the integration of local and scientific knowledge and to create vegetation management and conservation actions. Community-based Indigenous mapping has proven to be a powerful tool for the integration of traditional knowledge and its various dimensions, and knowledge integration between traditional and scientific knowledge has been successful. The project allowed for plant population analysis and adequate decision-making regarding natural resources management and conservation. The methods developed in this research represent significant progress in the development of internal capacities and empowerment of the community.

Participatory Mapping as a Didactic and Auxiliary Tool for Learning Community Integration, Technology Transference, and Natural Resource Management

“…Subsequently, participants calculated the available biomass volumes of spiny rush and willow in the five areas evaluated and the results were indicated in the thematic maps previously developed. For cartographic products used in the decision-making process for the management and conservation of plants species, see [25] for more details. Once this process was completed, the maps were printed, so all community members and visitors would locate the conservation and restoration, and use areas for plant species, as well as the historical and current sites of spiny rush and willow harvest sites.…”

“…In this context, participatory mapping approaches help identify place values and thus identify attitudes towards land use and potential conflicts [16,23]. Moreover, participatory mapping was proven useful for the management and conservation of natural resources by improving the decision-making process [24][25][26] and exploring landscape values for conservation planning processes [27][28][29]. Additionally, these approaches are useful in increasing public participation [30,31] and in promoting various governance dimensions [32,33].…”

“…Participatory processes were developed in Kumeyaay communities to map plant species distribution and assess their conservation status [9,25,42,43]; for the diagnosis and training of the community [42]; for the mapping of forest pests, and the construction of a cybercartographic atlas for natural resource management decision-making [35]. Neverthe-less, every effort was made to incorporate several dimensions into one analysis, such as cultural, biodiversity, and local economy.…”

“…We describe a participatory mapping process based on community mapping in the Kumeyaay community of San José de la Zorra, this community already developed participatory processes [9,25,42,43]. The community economic activity is based on the use of resources for the elaboration of artisanal crafts, and they want and need to publicize its activities and its location to take advantage of the tourism.…”

Participatory GIS-Based Approach for the Demarcation of Village Boundaries and Their Utility: A Case Study of the Eastern Boundary of Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka

“…As a complementary approach for spatial planning, the PGIS (participatory GIS) concept was introduced, which effectively utilizes local people's knowledge to produce outputs that can assist in the planning, implementation, and decision-making of local and government projects [16]. Recently, PGIS techniques have proven to be an important tool [17] for the recovery and integration of traditional knowledge and its various dimensions with scientific knowledge [13,[18][19][20][21], which involves the participation of community members and working with them in planning and conducting projects and studies.…”