Peru: plots at the tree-line and the house

Hi all,

I have a question about sampling at the tree line. I intend, as I think do the ant people, to sample at the tree line on the Trocha Union. Since there is no permanent plot here, and I am likely to want to re-visit, should we attempt to establish some sort of 'plot'? If so does anyone have suggestions for a design that would be helpful? For this purpose I notice there are some aluminium tree tags in the house, on top of Dunia and Miles' boxes of equipment. Could someone find out if they would mind if we took c. 50 of these tags?

Also Yadvinder, with regards to the house. It is generally in good order. There is a lack of cutlery, so tomorrow I will try to buy some to leave here. I might also suggest that the first bedroom at the top of the stairs might need real curtains, as the people using the metal stairs outside the window (from 6am!) can see in (ie. they can see me sleeping!).

Hope all is well, and congratulations Luiz!

Steven

more Malaysia

I had a paper accepted on Tuesday to Environmental Research Letters. The paper is on a British Council trip I took to Malaysia whereby we explored the environment-development-culture dynamics of a new tourism industry on the island of Pulau Redang.

One month in Borneo...

Hi all far away colleagues!

I'm enjoying some free wireless on a verandah in Sepilok. I'm about to head into Kalimantan for a week to do a last consultancy related, field visit. Otherwise, my time in Sabah has been quite productive, though still delayed by logistics and research permit processing. I do now have an official stamp in my passport allowing me to stay until April 2009, too bad my flight takes me back to the UK in June ;).

I have spent more time in oil palm plantation than forest on this trip; however, I hope to switch that ratio on my next field visit (looking like in October). I have surveyed about 6 hectares of forest logged at different times over the last 10 years, thanks to the amazing sabah forestry inventory team. That feat was accomplished in 4 days (a bit mad, really!). In comparison, my time in the plantation was quite sedate. I've sampled only about 2 hectares of oil palm of varying ages, though the variation among them is obviously much less and would be more affected by different management regimes, which would be hard to sample when I'm working with the same company for all of them. That may need to be remedied on my next visit.

I've also picked an interesting month to come to Sabah, as May is basically a month long harvest festival culminating in one day of binge drinking on may 31. As oil palm is harvested all year round the crop in question is rice and I have sampled their lovely rice wine, tapai (though that's not quite the right word for it). Otherwise, the drink of choice for these sabahans is tiger beer. Can't quite keep up with the drinking prowess, especially with my almost constant state of dehydration (i exaggerate). Though, I think I've sweated off a few more kilos, Khoon! Anyway, as I won't be able to find a sober Sabahan for miles on that weekend, i've opted for hiking Mt Kinabalu (4,200 m). I haven't quite confirmed if its the highest or second highest peak in SE Asia. So if you get a chance to think of me that day, I'm sure I'd appreciate any wishes of encouragement :).

After that I will finally be heading off to Danum Valley and hopefully spending two weeks in Kalabakan Forest Reserve, that may well be the site of the last, largest conversion of forest (including timber plantation) to oil palm in Sabah. I'll have to confirm, but I've heard numbers of around 80,000 ha. I'm hoping to do another 6-8 hectares there, though I won't have the 6-man team from the Sabah Forestry Department (so hopefully 3 of us can pull off 1 ha line transect in a day). I will then have to save two more forest reserves to survey when I come back in October. I figure if I can, at least, do another 12 has then, plus the data I'm collecting from the Sabah Forest Research Centre (a good 50 ha at least!) and a few other extremely generous researchers across Sabah- I should be in good shape come December.

Anyway, wanted to give you all an update. Hope you're doing well! and see you in June!

Alex

veg. model of disturbance made into audio

I made a simple vegetation model with stochastic disturbances awhile ago. I then turned the inverse of tree size into frequency and set the time step of music to be the time step of the model.

veg. model of disturbance made into audio

Just thought you all might find it mildly amusing to listen to after the workshop. You can hear the young trees (lower tones) grow and then as disturbance hits the forest begins to make a series of different tones, representing different tree sizes.

I have also attached two images of my simple disturbance model. It is truly spatial and not a patch model. It also has a nice graphic display.

The white circle is a random walk through the forest, in which the local trees act as audio sources (oscillators based on tree age) and this creates an audio soundscape.

Mike Palace

Workshop on Amazon Forest Disturbance and Recovery

There is a flurry of visitors this week. We have been holding a two-day workshop on assessing scales, frequency and intensity of natural disturance in Amazon forests. Participants include Jeff Chambers (Tulane, New Orleans), Niro Higuchi (INPA, Manaus), Manuel Gloor (Leeds), and Fernando and Mike Palace (New Hampshire) and Sassan Saatchi (NASA-JPL). Plenty of vibrant discussion and occasional disagreement, but a stimulating new synthesis began to emerge on the second day.

Other visitors this week include Sue Trumbore (UC-Irvine) who will be around Thu and Fri, Toby Marthews, the new postdoc on the Microsoft Andes Project, and our dear friend Rosa Maria Roman Cuesta, who is writing up some amazing results on fire in the Andes.

The best news this week is that Luiz Aragao has been awarded a prestigious three-year NERC Fellowship! Many congrats to him, and thanks to all the team for supporting him through his dry-run interview.

Arrival in Cusco

Hi all, Aline and I have arrived successfully at the house in Cuzco! Everything in good shape, wireless up and running! Javier has shown us the city centre. We have some preparations to do and then we are off to Wayquecha in a few days.

I left some spare climbing equipment in our wet lab. Its all labeled "Ecosystems Lab". Should any of our kit break I will email/post on the blog, and would be grateful if the next person to travel here could bring the item of kit requested.

Steven

Week in review

The MSc students finished their exams.

Khoon and Kate gave excellent upgrade report presentations.

Mike Palace and Toby Marthews, who are the new post-docs on the Microsoft grant to model the Kosnipata Andean Valley (Mike on 20% for 6 months, Toby starting in August), met in Oxford for the first time and had a 3-hour meeting with Lorenzo and me (and Rosie Fisher over the phone) to outline a plan for the project.

The Geography Cricket team won our first match of the season 186 to 52.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog of the Ecosystem Dynamics Group at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University. This blog is an opportunity for group members to keep us up to date on their activities, whether in Oxford , attending workshops or in the remotest reaches of the tropics. It also aspires to be a discussion forum where members can raise queries, debate questions or solve problems, especially when on fieldwork. It may also be a window to the outside world giving a taste of what we are up to. So please have a go, and send in your text, pictures and movie clips. It really is easy!