Can indigenous peoples be relied on to gather reliable environmental data?
Thursday, October 13, 2011 - 10:30
in Earth & Climate
Some scientists argue that the cultural and educational differences between trained scientists and native peoples are too large for the latter's data to be relied on in environmental studies. Now, researchers have demonstrated -- in a multi-year environmental study of 48,000 square kilometers of the Amazon -- that adapting data collection and verification systems to local cultures can make the resulting data as reliable as that collected by researchers.