Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The average person can be forgiven for a lack of fungal literacy. After centuries preoccupied with plants and animals, the institutions of natural science have been slow to prioritize fungi, and few of us receive even a basic education in their biology or ecology.
Collectively, there is an opportunity to better track phenological shifts and manage, adapt, and prepare for changes that lie ahead…and it might just start with a small, delicious berry.
SCIENCE is a political claim that the human world should be organized in a particular way on the basis of ‘scientific principles’ or what ‘the science’ tells us to do, or other formulations of that sort (some people call this scientism).
We are in desperate need of more integrated approaches that recognize our interdependent place in the natural world. Strengthening interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration will encourage a paradigm-shift towards integration, as will the sharing of knowledge between people with different worldviews.
One standout issue this time was how much joy I felt (and others appeared to feel) on being in the field, gathering on the farm, and (especially) being in the field that had greater diversity. All this is missing from our results. The conventional measures we use aren’t particularly good at reflecting the process of research, which – in citizen science at least – is arguably so much more important than ‘results’.
A successful Saami-led, salmon rewilding project on the Näätämö river in Arctic Finland illustrates the success of partnership between Indigenous knowledge and western science on environmental questions, say the authors of a recent paper, but outdated perceptions and prejudices means these kinds of partnerships elsewhere still too often fail.
The consensus-building approach of recent climate science has successfully established anthropogenic climate change as an indisputable fact. But it has failed to translate that knowledge into action.
This week on Sea Change Radio, we feature Lauren Markham who has chronicled the new generation of hipster farmers, or “farmsters, and Sharman Apt Russell on citizen science.
New technology is dramatically increasing the role of non-scientists in providing key data for researchers. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Caren Cooper of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology talks about the tremendous benefits — and potential pitfalls — of the expanding realm of citizen science.
