| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
Practical
training workshop
Participants felt that it would be valuable to have a workshop in the field
involving some training in biometrically rigorous methods followed by an examination
of the practical problems of applying these. It was felt that the workshop had
helped to highlight the need for training. An examination of the practical elements
in the field would help to expose the effects of academic background of field
workers and the cultural context on the development of methods.
Biometrics
hotline
It was suggested that a biometrics ‘hotline’ would be the preferred mode of
delivery of advice to field workers. It was noted that some organisations are
already running advisory services of this type, e.g. the UK Natural History
Museum provides experimental design advice for the British Petroleum funded
exploration projects. The Tropical Biological Association is attempting to provide
this kind of service and Reading University provides statistical advice for
DFID projects. In addition Christoph Kleinn provides an advisory service covering
Latin America from CATIE. The FAO have publications that can assist in this
respect but they do not provide an official service where people can e-mail
or call an advisor. It was noted that it is time-consuming and therefore expensive
to operate such an advisory service. FAO is attempting to set up a permanent
network for the discussion of inventory needs and experience.
Discussion
group
An e-mail discussion group will be operational
over the next 2-3 months that can be used to take forward the ideas developed
at the workshop. This will help to translate important issues into concrete
research proposals. The results of this discussion will be reported in the final
workshop proceedings scheduled for publication later in the year.
Enter discussion
Dissemination
of research ideas
It was made clear that ETFRN would not market research proposals developed but
would ensure that funding agencies are made aware of the workshop and the results
of discussions. For information on research funds participants were advised
to refer to the ETFRN web site. ETFRN can also help people to get in touch with
each other if they are interested in doing research on similar topics but this
is only possible if people inform ETFRN about their work and their interests.
It was stressed that ETFRN plays a facilitatory role in information sharing
on research, it is neither a funding organisation nor a research implementation
organisation.
Improvement
of methods reporting
A plea was made for adequate reporting of methods in published papers. It was
suggested that notices should be sent to journal editors requesting them to
ensure that methods are either reported adequately in the journal or that the
source of methods used is included in the paper’s references. Journals could
also be asked to publish news items on the workshop requesting that contributors
are encouraged to report protocols fully. Suggested journals to contact included
Economic Botany and the People and Plants Programme.
The following provides information on known activities up to April 2001 that relate to the workshop.
Email discussion
An email discussion was conducted through the ETFRN web site after the workshop in order to continue to debate some of the issues that had been raised and the suggested research themes. The discussion was divided into several topic areas and the following provides a summary.
The need
for better methods
This topic area was included to give people an opportunity to express their
own particular methodological problems. It was envisaged that such input would
help to target methodological research and/or technical advice and support systems.
Contributors included Trevor Abell, Jenny Wong and Isabelle Gambetta.
Trevor Abell sent in a request for an NTFP manual as he felt that NTFPs should form a component of the national forest inventory programme in Ghana. Isabelle Gambetta requested advice on how to include a variety of NTFPs in one inventory in an efficient manner. Jenny Wong responded to the latter suggesting that one should determine the best design for each NTFP of interest and then come to some compromise between the different designs so that plots could be used for more than one NTFP. She suggested that one should aim to minimise errors for the more important NTFPs and referred the reader to chapters 4 and 5 of the review document (Wong 2000).
Pseudo-replication
This topic came up during the discussion and built on the findings from the
review. In particular the fact that poor replication seems to occur quite often
in plant survey work. Contributors included Faizal Moola , Andrew Robinson,
Becky Kerns and Jenny Wong. The contributions from Faizal Moola and Andrew Robinson
were taken from the forest listserver.
Initially an interesting contribution came from Faizal Moola who wished to know why many studies of the spatial structure of plant communities often have low replication and what were the statistical implications of this. Andrew Robinson responded stating that often people were genuinely ignorant of statistical issues. Lack of replication often means that hypotheses of interest cannot be tested, in addition a low number of transects can lead to the breakdown of large-sample theory. Tools do exist for small samples, like the bootstrap, but their usefulness depends on the problem. Becky Kerns provided additional clarification stating that pseudo-replication occurs when there is no replication at the level of the population of interest, i.e. taking the results of a study undertaken in a small area and extrapolating these to draw conclusions about a larger area. Jenny Wong pointed out that people often make this mistake, not realising that such conclusions are not valid.
Objective
oriented data collection
This topic came up during the discussion and built on issues that came up during
the workshop (see discussion topic ‘Information needs’ on page 15). Contributors
included Paul Van Gardingen, Sheelagh O’Reilly and Jenny Wong.
Paul Van Gardingen started the discussion stating that the workshop had not spent enough time considering issues on data analysis, interpretation and application. He pointed out that many of the suggested research topics were at risk of being ‘supply driven’ when they should target expressed needs. This requires an initial understanding how data will be used and a definition of the minimum data requirements for such uses. Such a demand led approach has been successful in targeting agricultural research and should be used to target NTFP research. Sheelagh O’Reilly added to this stating that one of the key uses of NTFP data is to support local communities. Here she suggests that the challenge is to apply novel and innovative thinking that will give a high validity to local knowledge and control and develop appropriate low-cost methods that can be implemented in resource poor situations. Jenny Wong agreed that the development of methodology should be needs driven but pointed out that the results of the review suggested that basic information on distribution, abundance and yield of products is almost always required despite a variety of end-uses for the data. She said that the intention of the workshop had been to concentrate on the technical inventory issues relating to these information needs. She added that any NTFP inventory manual should provide guidance on the analysis, presentation and interpretation of results.
Community
level group
This topic was set up to discuss the research proposals that had been put forward
by the community level group during the workshop (see section 5.7 above). Contributors
included Isabelle Gambetta and Jenny Wong.
Jenny Wong noted that, as concluded by this working group, the Community Forestry Unit at FAO also recognises that there is a gap in the area of determining sustainable yields of forest products. Isabelle Gambetta stressed that community knowledge is important and useful in undertaking an NTFP inventory. In particular, the use of vernacular names was promoted. Jenny Wong noted that local names are important and useful but that the scientific names tended to more consistent and were needed if one intended to link with scientific knowledge.
Species
level group
This topic was set up to discuss the research proposals that had been put forward
by the species level group during the workshop (see section 5.7 above). Contributors
included Charlie Shackleton, Eric Boa and Jenny Wong.
Charlie Shackleton stressed that monitoring programs need to be focused to avoid the collection of excessive or unnecessary data. Methods need to be developed that are tailored to answer specific resource questions. Eric Boa and Jenny Wong provided clarification on the pint that the workshop was addressing ‘methodology’ defined as groups of methods as well as the study of methods.
Macro
level group
This topic was set up to discuss the research proposals that had been put forward
by the macro level group during the workshop (see section 5.7 above). Contributors
included Christoff Klein and Jenny Wong.
Christoff Klein called for the recognition of the fact that a specific research facilitating issue was the need for networking between institutions in the same region. He also asked whether there was really a need to develop new non-traditional methods for inventory design or whether it would be more advantageous to concentrate on applying the more traditional methods. Jenny Wong pointed out that because of the specific problems of NTFPs, i.e. :
Iit would be advantageous to investigate the applications of a range of newer, existing, methods to NTFP inventory. She noted further that initial application of adaptive cluster sampling in Cameroon is producing promising results.
Response
to the review
In this topic contributors were invited to comment on the review (Wong 2000)
that had been placed on the workshop web site. Contributors included Trevor
Abell, Juan Alberto Porcar Castell, M. Sivaram and Jenny Wong.
Jenny Wong announced that the review was to be edited for publication in the FAO NWFP series. All contributors applauded the work on the review and several wished to be kept informed of developments.
Juan Alberto Porcar Castell queried the use of ordinal scales for inventorying herbs as described in Box 2 of the review (Wong 2000). Specifically he wanted to know more about the method for determining percentage cover as well as the limitations this might place onstatistical analysis. Jenny Wong agreed that this method can limit statistical analysis and referred readers to Bullock’s chapter in Sutherland 1996, which describes a variety of methods.
Other reported activities
Jenny Wong informed us that a project has been funded by the EU/FAO to develop a decision support system for the design of NWFP inventories in Africa. A major component of this project is the preparation of a draft manual for NWFP inventory followed by the testing and refinement of methods suggested in the draft.
Christoph Kleinn informed us that a project has been funded by the EU under the INCO-DEV programme entitled ‘Research for sustainable management of Guadua bamboo in Colombia and Costa Rica’. This project will run for three years commencing in August 2001 and will include elements of inventory, assessment and evaluation as discussed at the workshop. It will be co-ordinated from the University of Freiburg and the research will be undertaken in Costa Rica and Colombia. Research partners include Imperial College, London, UK; University of Costa Rica, San Jose; CATIE, Costa Rica; and the Technical University of Pereira, Colombia.