Veterinarians are gingerly embracing the honeybee, a vital pollinator for agriculture but one that’s in increasing danger.

In the Bolivian Altiplano, fewer Aymara farmers are relying on local weather knowledge to schedule farming tasks, like choosing the best dates to plant crops and predicting a frost or drought. At the same time, there is growing doubt about whether these traditional indicators remain relevant today in the context of rapid social, economic, and climatic changes. 

Farmers are struggling because the National Weather Service of Bolivia (SEHNAMI) fails to provide useful weather forecasts due to the geographical complexity of the Andes and a scarcity of weather stations. In addition, many farmers can’t access this information because SEHNAMI lacks local outreach programs to deliver reports directly to them. In a region with a weak technical forecasting system, local knowledge is a vital resource, but its use is declining.

Scientists in the past focused on preserving local weather knowledge or discussing how it might help communities adapt to climate change. However, very few researchers have scientifically validated local weather indicators, since doing so requires many years of historical meteorological data to establish statistical “skill” in local forecasting. 

Faced with this gap, researchers in the US and Bolivia recently set out to validate indigenous indicators in 2 Bolivian municipalities: Umala in the Central Altiplano and Ancoraimes in the Northern Altiplano. To do this, they paired each traditional weather sign with a measurable variable, like temperature, that could approximate it. This approach allowed them to directly compare traditional observations with scientific data.

The researchers wanted to determine whether traditional weather knowledge is still accurate and relevant under current conditions, since validating these methods would strengthen local knowledge and benefit the schools and policies that promote it. To test this, the researchers worked with 6 Aymara communities. First, they conducted workshops with local leaders and experts to compile a set of weather-forecast indicators. Then, they surveyed 95 farmers to rank the reliability of these indicators. 

Through discussions with these communities, the team identified 13 weather indicators in the Central region and 20 in the Northern region. These indicators included specific plants, animals, and physical factors like constellations or winds that the farmers used to decide when and where to plant crops, and to predict weather conditions for the next season. The researchers focused on 2 key indicators that the farmers ranked as most reliable: the presence or absence of moisture under rocks on the Fiesta de San Juan on June 24th, and the flowering patterns of specific plants, called Thola and Sank’ayu. The farmers used the San Juan indicator to predict whether the upcoming year would be rainy or dry, and the plants to determine the most favorable dates for planting to avoid agricultural risks like frosts.

Finally, the researchers compared forecasts based on these 2 signs with over 30 years of meteorological data from nearby weather stations. In both cases, they used the minimum daily temperature as the measurable way to represent these local signs scientifically. Their results showed that the minimum daily temperature on the Fiesta de San Juan could explain more than half (55.5%) of the changes in rainfall during the growing season. They also confirmed that severe frosts that “burned” Thola and Sank’ayuthe flowers were followed by periods without rain, validating the farmers’ strategy of delayed planting.

The researchers concluded that local weather indicators used by Aymara farmers are most reliable for seasonal planning, especially in predicting the start of the rainy season. They stated that this result helps legitimize traditional knowledge and empower the community. For example, these communities now hold regular meetings to discuss forecasts and share this information with their neighbors via WhatsApp groups. 

However, the team acknowledged that local knowledge was limited to short-term forecasting, as it only provided warnings a few hours in advance. Farmers need alerts several days in advance to effectively reduce their vulnerability to events such as frosts or hail. For this reason, the researchers suggested that the next step will be to co-produce forecasts by combining meteorological science with traditional knowledge.

The post Testing local weather knowledge in the Bolivian Altiplano appeared first on Sciworthy.

A federal plan would impose drastic water cuts on Arizona, California and Nevada in dry years over the next decade. A legal battle could follow.

© Rebecca Noble/Reuters

A federal plan would impose drastic water cuts on Arizona, California and Nevada in dry years over the next decade. A legal battle could follow.

As increased rain makes grasslands and cornfields possible in areas that once were deserts, the world’s largest beef importer is becoming more self-reliant by expanding domestic herds.

© Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Warming is expected to fuel the spread of food-borne pathogens. We might not be prepared.

© Melanie Moser/CDC, via Associated Press

More than 3,000 solar panels power Jack’s Solar Garden, cool the land and help it turn a profit

The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Thalia Juarez/The Guardian

© Photograph: Thalia Juarez/The Guardian

© Photograph: Thalia Juarez/The Guardian

The affected products were shipped starting June 29 and have expiration dates through Aug. 3.

In 1982, she led the research team that figured out how to genetically alter plants, a discovery that would eventually transform global agriculture.

Officials in Santa Clara County began knocking on doors on Monday to collect potentially infested plants sold at some Costco stores.

The birds are particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, and France’s torrid June took a heavy toll.

© Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

A lawsuit filed in California claims the automaker’s philanthropic arm stole technology intended to help poor farmers, but it is not clear to what end.

A prolonged drought means the nation’s largest reservoirs are dwindling, and litigation over access to water could lie ahead.

A prolonged drought means the nation’s largest reservoirs are dwindling, and litigation over access to water could lie ahead.

© Nina Riggio for The New York Times

With machine learning and a high-resolution imaging robot, scientists measured and mapped the extent of Earth’s carbon circulatory system.

In the mountain villages of Guatemala’s Western Highlands, farmers are combining ancient Maya knowledge with modern sustainable farming techniques to protect their crops from pests and disease. Smallholders are creating homemade biopesticides using plants with strong smells and flavors to deter pests on their family plots. This is helping to cut back on the use of increasingly expensive agrochemicals, many of which have been labeled as dangerous to human health and linked to soil degradation. About 60 Guatemalan communities in the Western Highland departments of Sololá and Huehuetenango, as well as Chiquimula in the east, are working to revive these traditional techniques with support from the international development organization World Neighbors. Their focus is to restore and strengthen traditional knowledge, combining it with agroecological practices that help families produce surplus food they can sell to boost household incomes. “Traditional farming techniques are becoming popular because they are simple practices to apply, use local resources, and have proven to be effective,” Dayani Roche, a program associate at World Neighbors, told Mongabay via email. Rather than a single ancient recipe, farmers are using “a living combination of ancestral knowledge, local experimentation and more recent agroecological practices,” he said, which are “safer for families, soil, water and biodiversity than many chemical alternatives.” The Maya civilization, which once stretched across modern-day Central America, had a rich history of farming dating back to 2000 B.C.E. Its most celebrated agriculture system is the milpa, a form of intercropping that involves a mix of maize, beans and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The parasitic, flesh-eating fly has now been confirmed in cows, goats and dogs.

Here’s why farmers and scientists are concerned over the New World screwworm’s unwelcome return to the United States.

We asked three farmers to tell us how new technology is revolutionizing the way they work.

A newly identified pest is raising concerns for North Carolina’s blueberry industry. What began as a mystery beneath North Carolina’s blueberry fields has now been traced to a surprising culprit: a giant root-feeding beetle never before confirmed attacking blueberries anywhere else in the United States. Researchers at North Carolina State University have identified the insect [...]