THE CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNOGEOLOGICAL CULTURAL MODELS DERIVED FROM TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE TO INFORM PLACE-BASED EDUCATION

Ethnogeology is the scientific study of human relationships with and knowledge of the Earth system, and is generally investigated within the context of a specific culture. Many indigenous and local systems of environmental and place knowledge incorporate empirical observations and culturally framed interpretations of geological features and processes. Ethnogeological interpretations may differ from those of conventional mainstream geoscience, but they are validated by their direct relevance to long-term cultural and environmental resilience and sustainability, typically in challenging environments. Ethnogeologic findings can enrich geoscientific knowledge bases for further research, and inform place-based geoscience education that has been shown to engage and enrich students from diverse underrepresented minority backgrounds.

Ethnogeological research meshes methods from field geology with methods from field ethnography, such as cultural consensus, used for the description of cognitive patterns about a sphere of knowledge in a group while capturing diversity in how the population thinks about a specific cultural domain, and other methods of rapid participatory assessment. We report here on an ongoing field study in the Dominican Republic (DR) and Puerto Rico (PR) on ethnogeological knowledge of karst topography, geology, and hydrogeology among local cultural indigenous communities such as the Boricua jíbaro and the Dominican campesino. Applied focused ethnographic fieldwork results suggest a good fit for the cultural consensus model about geological processes among culturally expert consultants in geological knowledge related to karst in DR (4.604) and PR (4.669), as well as competence average with values of 0.552 and 0.628 respectively. Results suggests the existence of a regional cultural model for the domain of karst that is shared between DR and PR populations that reside in or near karst terrain. Additional data in support of the cultural model include stories, analogies, and local history that describes processes such as cave and speleothem formations, erosion, weathering, and groundwater systems.