Practices, perceptions and TEK pass from generation to generation, perpetuating

the viability of pastoral nomadism on these cultural landscapes (Krzywinski and Pierce 2001; Krzywinski et al. 2009). Acacias and all other perennial plants in the study area are shaped by human PND-1186 mouse activities both directly by people and indirectly by their domestic animals. These forces even give the acacia tree its distinctive canopy AZD0530 shape, which upon close scrutiny clearly serves to increase green biomass for fodder and optimize its uses by pastoralists (Krzywinski and Pierce 2001; Andersen et al. 2014). We can adequately interpret and explain acacia shapes and architecture, populations and distributions

and many other details on the cultural landscape only by understanding the dynamic interplay of people and biotic as well as abiotic factors within the indigenous land use management systems. In recent decades there has been increasing attention to TEK and related perspectives, and to their roles in shaping cultural learn more landscapes and human–environment systems (Birks 1988; Reynolds et al. 2007; Berkes 2008). The emerging consensus is that the boundary between traditional and scientific ecological knowledge is soft, and that an integrative science combining the two can be highly productive (IISH 2014; Agrawal 1995; Huntington 2000; Reynolds et al. 2007). TEK in ecosystems governed by slow dynamics, such as in arid lands, is of outstanding scientific interest. Important processes such as regeneration of perennial vegetation normally happen on the scale of a decade or longer (Wiegand et al. 2004). why These processes arguably are best understood not by transient outsiders but by people living with and depending on them. In recent decades there has also been growing attention to drylands as human–environment systems, with recognition of the non-equilibrium dynamics of arid ecosystems (Ellis and Swift 1988; Westoby et al. 1989; Briske et al. 2003; Vetter 2005;

Reynolds et al. 2007). These nuanced, bottom-up approaches that value indigenous knowledge and decision-making contrast with narratives of the 1970s and ‘80s, when traditional land use practices of nomadic pastoralists were blamed for causing desertification by overexploiting and misusing natural resources in a fragile environment (Lamprey 1983; Thomas and Middleton 1994; Niamir-Fuller 1999; Davis 2005; Herrmann and Hutchinson 2005; Homewood and Randall 2008). Today such narratives seem ill-conceived as they were often based on prejudice against nomads rather than on sound science, and TEK-informed conservation projects are now widely-advocated. Apparent progress must however be viewed critically.