Rainfall variability, extreme events, and vulnerability in heterogeneous social and environmental systems

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This project investigates how farmers use observations and their perceptions of rainfall variability to inform their agricultural decisions. This lack of consensus between weather measurements and people’s local perceptions of changing rainfall patterns can result in farmers making inadequate choices about strategic short- and long-term crop selection strategies. These choices can endanger livelihoods and well-being. This project advances knowledge about differences between measurements and perceptions of rainfall trends and how farmers decide to act on this uncertain environmental information. From this information this research will develop meaningful rainfall metrics in direct collaboration with farmers that can be used to reduce their vulnerability and enhance local adaptation strategies in anticipation of future droughts. Large gaps exist in knowledge of where changes in rainfall variability and extremes are occurring, when and how these affect individual farmers and their agricultural decisions, and if these are currently represented in instrumental datasets and by local climate services organizations. This project quantifies recent trends in a range of different daily rainfall datasets and deploys new weather stations to validate them in complex terrain. Local perceptions and knowledge of past and present precipitation variability are assessed using a set of surveys, focus groups, and interviews in agricultural communities. This project will determine how local organizations integrate these different and possibly disparate knowledge systems as part of their attempts to help farmers become more resilient to rainfall variability. This project expands knowledge of the cognitive frameworks that farmers use to understand and act on their own observations of environmental phenomena in combination with the information provided to them by other institutions and organizations. This project generates knowledge necessary to improve agricultural decision-making, reduce vulnerability, and build adaptive capacity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.