Some of them are semantic. Lining up data from similar machines across the country is fairly straightforward, but lining up observations made by individual observers with perhaps different reference frames is a bit more complicated. A western-trained ice scientist may want to know how thick the ice is and what its physical strength is and has some tests to do that. An aboriginal individual is perhaps more concerned with simply whether the ice is safe enough to go across on foot or on a snow machine and would have different ways of determining that.
There are different ways of understanding the same physical phenomenon, and quite often there are linguistic or conceptual barriers that prevent that knowledge being shared for a common purpose.