When talking about the science community as a whole, one of my colleagues, Jeff Taylor, recently wrote: “The bottom line is that we still have a lot to learn when it comes to communicating science … but we’re getting there.” As a trained ecologist now fully embedded in the Education and Outreach Department at NEON, I spend a lot of time discussing what it means to effectively communicate NEON science. A theme that reappears time and again during these discussions is “developing community” around the science. Sounds great. The question is how best to do it.
The team of researchers and community members that make up the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) have been thinking about the idea of community for quite some time. The mission of ELOKA is to provide data management services and user support to facilitate the collection, preservation, exchange, and use of local observations and knowledge of the Arctic. I recently had the privilege of attending one of ELOKA’s rare face-to-face workshops here in Boulder, CO, and what I took away was an experience I wish everyone at NEON and in the scientific community could have at least once during their career.
SnowChange Cooperative’s Tero Mustonen (Selkie Village, Finland), Pyotr Kaurgin (Chukchee Nomadic Community, Turvaurgin, Russia), Russian Interpretor Elena Freeman (Unviersity of Colorado) and Vyacheslav Shadrin (Chief, Council of Yukaghir Elders, Russia) at the ELOKA Workshop. Photo credit: Chris McNeave. Courtesy ELOKA
The attendees at the Boulder conference were from more than 9 countries on 4 continents, from research institutions and small villages. Some were social scientists, some were hard scientists and some were citizen scientists. Some were not scientists at all. Most spoke English, and several did not. A few spoke it only as a second language. One attendee had never before traveled outside his village community in Russia, but made the trek to the United States just for this conference. Such is the ‘community’ that makes up ELOKA. This diverse community is united by their shared love of the Arctic, their concern about the changes they see taking place there, and a strong desire to communicate with one another and the world as a whole about their experiences.
The challenge with any large collaboration like ELOKA is to figure out who actually makes up your community and what drives them to do what they do. The scientific community and the community of ELOKA, for example, are not one and the same. The ELOKA community is made up of a diverse group of peoples of which the scientific community is one piece, no less or more important than the other pieces. ELOKA works to help the scientific members of their community reach their goals while simultaneously working to help the tribes, social scientists, and other members of the community reach their goals.
Alaska Community Member Olia Sutton teaches Jeff Braucher (National Snow and Ice Data Center) the “how to’s” on operating an Arctic Yo Yo. Photo credit: Chris McNeave. Courtesy ELOKA
To make all of this work takes a significant investment of time on the part of everyone involved. Time is invested to build relationships between local tribes and researchers. Time is invested to work through and understand the cultural and language differences among groups. Time is invested to develop strategies that ensure that all parties benefit from a given project. Once solid relationships are built, for example, tribes may choose to provide scientific researchers with data about ocean wildlife populations previously undocumented by scientists. The scientists, in turn, may utilize the new data to improve hunting and fishing regulations imposed on the tribes. By working with local tribes, scientists can supplement their research with rich natural history data they would never be able to gather in the short span of a grant funded project. The tribes benefit when the scientists provide them with a voice to share their knowledge of areas like the arctic with the world through online resources, scientific publications, databases, maps, and more (for example, From the Ice into the Computer and Back)
With an audience as diverse in disciplines and life experiences as those in the ELOKA conference room, I expected to hear some unique talks and to participate in some interesting discussions. One after another, presenters stood and discussed their experiences bringing together diverse groups of people to collect better, more informed, scientific data from the Arctic and engage local communities in the scientific process, often in ways that benefited members of the communities as well. I was not disappointed. Martin Nweeia and David Angnatsiak, presented research on narwhal tusk function that hinged on successful collaborations between Harvard University researchers and local elders and hunters of the High Arctic. Tero Mustonen discussed the pan-Arctic Snowchange Cooperative based in Finland in which grandmothers from the nomadic Chukchi communities in arctic Russia were sent to the Barefoot College in India to learn how to bring solar electricity to their nomadic camps. Finn Danielsen discussed the challenges and benefits of community-based documentation and management of living resources in North West Greenland.
The collaborations, communications, and open exchanges of ideas were inspiring. In the breakout discussions scattered throughout the three day conference, I listened to attendees criticize each other’s point of views without condescension, hold heated disagreements in which both parties still managed to maintain a decorum of respect, and watched attendees come to new understandings about the challenges facing each of us at the table. After three days, all of us were exhausted, but I doubt anyone left with the same understanding of the Arctic that they arrived with.
As we work to communicate science and develop community here at NEON, my hope is that we can replicate what ELOKA has done so well already. As the NEON community works to share science and ideas in an open, engaging, and collaborative way, we will advance our understanding of NEON science in ways we are not yet able to imagine and discover new information that we, as individuals, could not discover alone. Therein lies the unique strength of NEON science. Therein lies the challenge.
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