Devolution is used by Wolff and Medin (2001) to refer to a decline in knowledge about living things. It is often associated with a shift from rural to urban residence and/or with a decline in cultural support for biological knowledge. Wolff and Medin (2001) test the hypothesis that devolution has occurred in knowledge about trees among English speakers and find that it has. [JG]

Doorstep accounting refers to valuing natural resource use by calculating value based on a source of prices and records of the actual quantities of natural resources (e.g. forest products) brought into households. Following a period of training and supervision, informants may record their own resource use. Doorstep accounting may be biased by ignoring resources consumed outside the household and/or used for construction. [DF]