What can a field guide achieve?
If asked: ‘What is the purpose of your field guide?’, most authors would probably reply:
‘To help people identify plants.’ But what does this identification of plants achieve? Why is it that the authors have gone to the trouble of putting together a field guide in order to help people identify plants? Is it to improve conservation, educate the public, attract eco-tourists or help forest management? To find out, it is useful to look at existing guides and ask both their authors and their users about the effects of using the guide. Many users can say how they have used it, and authors can divulge what feedback they have received.
The World Bank has given considerable support to field guide production over the last decade, based on the philosophy that ‘people will only protect what they love and can love only what they know’. In Indonesia, for example, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences commissioned or translated 15 field guides covering birds, amphibians, dragon-flies, snails, bamboos, orchids and wild bananas, among others. These guides make biodiversity information easily accessible to students, environmental assessment professionals and the broader public, and help to build a constituency for conservation.
We shall see throughout this book that guides in different circumstances can achieve some or all of the following:
•
By enhancing general accuracy of identification of plants in the field, they can improve the precision of forest inventories, growth and yield studies, or pre-harvest stock maps (where one identification error can cost a timber company hundreds if not thousands of dollars).
•
Secondary benefits of the above are, then, a greater probability of sustainable logging and more efficient selection between protection and production areas.
•
By allowing local users of a forest to look up a scientific name, and by allowing scientists to validate a local name, a better link between global and local knowledge is likely. People can look up whether species are globally rare, locally used, toxic, dangerous to livestock, nutritious or self-fertile – the list is endless and the benefits unpredictable.
Identifying biodiversity 5
•
By improving general knowledge of plants, local residents will have more to tell tourists and are more likely to earn money as tourist guides. Eco-tourists are more likely to enjoy themselves on a forest visit and recommend the place (and the guide) to their friends.
•
Field guides, particularly less technical ones, are commodities in themselves even if they are not used for identification. People buy them as souvenirs, and people can profit by selling them to tourists.
•
Situated in a library, or advertised or available on the internet, field guides are a beacon that say: these people value this forest; this forest must be of some interest.
They put the ecosystem on the map for politicians, bankers, visitors and others to see.
Why do we need new field guides and a manual?
The authors of the Global Biodiversity Assessment, a mammoth work to establish the base-line of biodiversity assessment after the CBD in 1992, state: ‘The range of available field guides, keys and other identifying aids is a major constraint to the assessment of biodiversity’ (Heywood, 1995, p568).
Scientific work (biodiversity monitoring and ecological studies) is being held up by the lack of guides based on recent taxonomic revision, and especially by the lack of guides in local languages. Botanists may know the species well; but they often produce guides that are difficult to use (for example, because they do not know the users well).
Conversely, local people and community workers may know the users well, but may produce guides that contain scientifically inaccurate information.
We intend this manual to be useful to all producers of plant guides by focusing on the process which they should follow in order to ensure that the guide will suit the objective of the author and users, and the needs and abilities of the user group for which it is intended. The manual also helps the producers of guides to work within the limits of available resources. The manual is supported by the Virtual Field Herbarium (VFH) website (see Box 1.1).
In this book, we focus on plant field guides for several reasons. First, the great majority of field guides are for birds (as many as 70 per cent, according to Stevenson et al, 2003). However, there are about 25 times more species of plants than of birds.
Second, plants, as primary producers, often form the most significant part of the biomass and control climate. And, finally, we are botanists. Having said all of that, we believe that most of the main points in this manual will also apply to animal guides.
In writing this book, we worked with teams of researchers in five countries to explore more systematic and participatory ways of producing field guides that really work and that meet the needs for which they are produced. Our collaborators have produced a range of acclaimed guides (see Box 1.2) and their experiences have led them to write parts of this book. We accompany the development of these particular guides through the chapters that follow.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
This manual is structured around a core process that is outlined in Chapter 2. The text is supported by examples drawn from real experiences of producing a range of guides, as
6 Plant Identification
BOX 1.1 THE VIRTUAL FIELD HERBARIUM (VFH)
The Virtual Field Herbarium (VFH) is a website for tropical field botanists, available at http://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/VFH/ (see Figure 1.1). It is closely linked to this book, supporting it with added detail and examples.
The VFH is maintained and will be further developed in the Oxford herbaria: it aims both to stimulate field guide production at national or more local levels around the tropics, and to help with tropical plant identification. The VFH has the following features:
•
various ‘how to write’
tips – an extensive
overview of this
process, with histori-
cal, practical and
other details;
•
the ability to explore
and understand
images of various
jargon terms, and how
they relate to plants of
various families in
different countries (a
glossary with notes
emphasizes how
various types of terms
are appropriate for
various types of
users);
•
an interactive bibliog-
raphy of tropical plant
field guides;
•
images that can be
downloaded free for
use in local field
guides (providing illus-
trations is often a
Figure 1.1 A page from the Virtual
daunting task for
Field Herbarium website
many prospective
authors);
•
a VFH interactive image gallery, which behaves as an identification tool itself, filtering images by species characters;
•
prepared field guides that can be downloaded for local printing – we will help users to make a simple type of pictorial guide directly from the site.
See Box 5.12 (page 112) on the concept of modular field guides for foresters to see how the the VFH might also help in making a usable modular guide.
Identifying biodiversity 7
well as by detailed methods to help achieve particular stages in the process. Each step in the process is described in detail in separate chapters (see Figure 2.1, page 16). However, the book is in no sense a linear description of a process. In order to plan a field guide (using the methods described in Chapter 3), readers will need to be familiar with the options and issues described in Chapters 4–8, which outline alternatives in format, types of illustr
ation, information context and presentation, and the need for identification keys. Similarly, the latter stages of testing and publishing are described in Chapters 9 and 10 respectively, but it is essential to think about the costs and scope of these steps at the planning stage, and it will be valuable to read these chapters before starting out. Chapter 2 goes through the process in detail and will help you decide which chapters will be most useful to you. We hope that this book inspires and helps you to produce new and useful guides, and to bring the fields of botany and participatory development closer together.
BOX 1.2 LEARNING BY DOING: FIELD GUIDES IN FIVE COUNTRIES
To write this manual, we worked with scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities in five countries to produce field guides, tailored to particular uses and circumstances, or ‘guidelets’ – parts of a full field guide designed specifically for effectively testing their usability. This work was supported by the Forestry Research Programme (FRP) of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), and enabled us to compare experiences and methods used across a wide range of case studies. Those case studies comprise the following.
Bolivia
RELEVANT CASE STUDIES: 3.1 (page 27); 3.4 (page 48); 3.7 (page 57); 9.2 (page 232); 10.1 (page 239); 10.2 (page 245)
The NGO Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) is contracted by the Government of Bolivia to manage the Noel Kempff Mercardo national park on the border with Brazil, which features exceptionally high biodiversity. Its approach involves the development of eco-tourism opportunities and close collaboration with the indigenous communities who live in the buffer zone and now manage large areas of forest. With support from the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical, or CIAT (Bolivia’s Centre for Tropical Agricultural Research), FAN collaborated with park staff and communities to produce two guides, one a loose-leaf folder of laminated pages for eco-tourists, easily taken into the humid muddy conditions of the park (Vargas and Jordán, 2002), and the other a more conventional book, rigorously researched and tested, with the villagers illustrating and recording their most used species and knowledge (Vargas and Jordán, 2003). The production of this book involved dozens of local people in order to make sure that everyone felt clear about why they were involved and what they might expect at the end, and featured complex political aspects. It was a hugely popular exercise that attracted new community members at each stage.
Brazil
RELEVANT CASE STUDIES: 3.2 (page 30); 3.5 (page 50); 3.8 (page 58); 7.1 (page 164); 7.3 (page 179); 9.1 (page 231)
Guides in northeast Brazil were prepared by a consortium led by the environmental NGO
Serviço de Assessoria às Organizações Populares Rurais (SASOP), working with the University of Para and supported by Plantas do Nordeste, a network of organizations
8 Plant Identification
including the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew. As in Bolivia, a comparative approach was taken – two guides were written in the same area (the Caatinga of Bahia), based on the same subset of plants (forage legumes), for different user groups. One (Costa et al, 2002), a short guide to 21 species selected for their usefulness to farmers, was produced with a local NGO; the other (de Queiroz et al, forthcoming), an ambitious guide to all 265 species in this category, was led by the University of Pará. As with the Bolivian community guide, the shorter Brazilian guide was a vast multi-stakeholder exercise with many planning and evaluation workshops to work out the most user-friendly options and to document the process for this manual.
Cameroon
RELEVANT CASE STUDY: 8.1 (page 184)
The genus Cola was the focus of field tests of various formats; there are at least 21 species in the forest near the Limbe Botanic Gardens around Mount Cameroon. This area is a hotspot of globally rare species, and there are several initiatives promoting local participation in biodiversity inventories, notably at the botanic gardens themselves. Unfortunately, very few people can name many of the rarer plant species in the area, and the demand for village-friendly, yet scientifically accurate, field guides is therefore high.
One of the principal issues was how different formats of minimal text, such as picture-or real plant-based guides, might help to identify individual species within a complex genus. Distinguishing infertile plants is notoriously difficult for some species; however, Cola are generally small trees, so leaves are usually easy to collect or inspect. Since the field tests concentrated on a small number of species, a wider variety of different formats was used than was possible in the other trials.
Ghana
RELEVANT CASE STUDIES: 3.3 (page 43); 4.2 (page 65); 8.1 (page 184) Ghanaian forests are commercially important as a source of timber; yet farmers often do not know the names of large trees on their farms, even if they are relatively well known to botanists. Even the best technical tree-spotters cannot identify many non-timber species, and for many there is even confusion about timber tree names, causing problems in sawmills and for sustainable management plans. There is an increasing demand to diversify sustainable forest use for the benefit of the villagers surrounding the protected hotspot forests in the southwest corner of the forest zone. Many villagers around these hotspot forests are newcomers and know little of the local and often rare species. Eco-tourism and other initiatives related to this demand would therefore benefit from new field guides –
forest shrubs and lianas are even less well known locally than trees. Initiatives for villagers to earn a local income from eco-tourist schemes will otherwise suffer due to limited knowledge.
Past experience has indicated that an earlier technical guide to Ghana’s trees, based around line drawings and text, cannot be used accurately by people outside the original target of forestry technical staff. This is not surprising given the limited opportunities to read and understand technical English in the villages of the forest areas. It was therefore decided that a guide based on photographs of bark slash, alongside other images, would work best in helping identification (see Case study 8.1, page 184). A ‘modular guide’
approach was tried, capable of being expanded though time or reduced to specific local interests.
Identifying biodiversity 9
Grenada
RELEVANT CASE STUDIES: 3.3 (page 43); 8.1 (page 184) Grenada is a small Caribbean island state, known locally as a Spice Island, yet ironically too small to justify any local botanical infrastructure. Grenada relies heavily on tourism (as well as nutmeg and other agroforestry products) and is covered by a variety of forest types. Nevertheless, very few Grenadines know many of their indigenous species. It was soon discovered that the flora is incompletely known to botanists globally, in spite of the recent completion of the Flora of the Lesser Antilles (Howard, 1974–1989). The main demand is for field guides that will ‘unlock’ the value, interest and appeal of the vegetation’s biodiversity, facilitating poverty alleviation among tour guides; return visits from and sales to eco-tourists; and awareness of biodiversity among schoolchildren. There is also some demand for more detailed knowledge for those seeking to manage natural resources effectively. For instance, the recent and uncontested conversion of a national park to a golf course was facilitated by a complete lack of knowledge of Grenada’s endemic or very rare plants.
Trials here (see Case study 8.1, page 184) cover a large cross-section of species on the island in a variety of habitats (around 100 of the 1000), including a wide variety of different species, but with some ‘difficult’ groups of similar species. Three of the most likely formats for illustrating an eco-tourist guide were tested – photographs, line drawings and paintings – making a set of 315 items (that is, 105 species in three guidelet sets). The material and lessons from these tests have subsequently been used in a full field guide to most of the flora.
2
Producing a successful guide:
Principles, purpose, people and process
Anna Lawrence and Patricia Norrish
WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL GUIDE?
A successful guide is one that is used by those for whom it was produced, for the purpose for which it was produced. Of course, a guide needs to be accurate, attractive, relevant, affordable and available; but it also has to function well. To be genuinely successful, a guide must convey good quality information that actually improves the capabilities of the user. This means that it has to be usable – the person reading it can find, understand and apply the information that he or she needs. In order to achieve all of this, the authors need to involve a range of experts (who may include local experts with traditional knowledge), as well as the potential users, in planning and researching the guide. This may necessitate a consultative planning process and a collaborative team approach.
This chapter explores the principles of a good field guide and links them to the people and processes required to fit the guide to its purpose. Box 2.1, at the end of the chapter, gives some examples of these principles as demonstrated by real field guides produced in Brazil.
PURPOSE
It is surprising how many guides are produced without a clear aim. While the obvious primary function of a field guide is to help people identify plants, apart from professional biologists, most field guide users require more than the identification of an unknown plant. Instead, guides are often used to help confirm the identity of a plant in order to find further information about it. It is this information which may, in fact, comprise the purpose of the guide. For example, a guide to fuelwood species may be intended to encourage farmers to plant more trees for firewood – in which case, farmers are unlikely to have trouble with identifying trees, but may simply need reassurance that
12 Plant Identification
they are talking about the same species as is highlighted in the guide. They can then find information on how to cultivate the species. If the guide is to be sold, it is also important to be aware of the market. In some cases, the sale of the guide is itself the main purpose of the enterprise.
Plant Identification Page 3