Tracy, I am really glad you have posted this well-written piece. Speaking as part of the ancient history of modern water management, I was involved in a similar experience on the Gal Oya Project in Sri Lanka, where it was really tough to convince engineers that farmers had important knowledge about their system. In its early years, IIMI (now IWMI) documented numerous similar examples in Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and elsewhere. Examples are work by Bob Yoder on hill irrigation systems, and a spreadsheet model developed by Sakthivadivel and Jeff Brewer (an anthropologist) for using indigenous knowledge to design interventions on tank cascades in Sri Lanka. But all that knowledge and experience has apparently been lost, and we are now "re-discovering" it [though these are available as IIMI pubs--there is a CD with all these ancient IIMI pubs].
I hope you are right that WLE will provide creative opportunities for hydrologists and others to work with social scientists. We are after all dealing with human-biophysical systems in watersheds.
Tracy, I am really glad you have posted this well-written piece. Speaking as part of the ancient history of modern water management, I was involved in a similar experience on the Gal Oya Project in Sri Lanka, where it was really tough to convince engineers that farmers had important knowledge about their system. In its early years, IIMI (now IWMI) documented numerous similar examples in Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and elsewhere. Examples are work by Bob Yoder on hill irrigation systems, and a spreadsheet model developed by Sakthivadivel and Jeff Brewer (an anthropologist) for using indigenous knowledge to design interventions on tank cascades in Sri Lanka. But all that knowledge and experience has apparently been lost, and we are now "re-discovering" it [though these are available as IIMI pubs--there is a CD with all these ancient IIMI pubs].
I hope you are right that WLE will provide creative opportunities for hydrologists and others to work with social scientists. We are after all dealing with human-biophysical systems in watersheds.