Executive Summary =D

I sent out a note to my colleagues a few days ago to let them know I had returned, and though it might be interesting to post here a part of that note:

As many of you know, this year I had the great opportunity of being sponsored to participate in an Earthwatch expedition through Project Better World. Earthwatch is a non-profit organisation that facilitates groups of volunteers (not necessarily scientists) to work with researchers doing environmental field work throughout the world. Shell supports Earthwatch by sponsoring its employees to participate as volunteers.

I was selected to participate in a forestry study in the Puerto Rican Rain forest at the end of November 2010.

The research was conducted by Tropic Ventures, an organisation aiming to demonstrate that it is possible to do sustainable forestry in the tropical rainforest. Puerto Rico’s rainforest is mainly secondary forest, as most of the primary one was cut down in the 19030-50’s to make space for sugar cane and coffee plantations. After the 1950’s these industries collapsed and people moved to the cities, leaving the forest to re-grow. Tropic Ventures has been planting valuable wood trees (Mahogany and Blue Mahoe) for the last 30 years in between the native trees (it’s not a real plantation, if you’re a non-expert like me you need to look hard to know which ones are the planted trees!), in part to stabilise the soil and protect the watersheds, but also with the intention of harvesting some of these trees in order to allow the people working in the project to make a living out of it.  The specific objective of the Earthwatch sponsored project is to make sure that the planting and harvesting of the Mahoe and Mahogani trees is not having a negative impact on the biodiversity of the forest. We helped with field research in the following topics:

·         Census of the planted trees: measure high, diameter and surrounding forest basal area. This sounds easy, but it’s less so when the trees are located in muddy 30 degrees slopes full of other vegetation!

·         Herpetology study: Study the population of frogs and lizards in the forest and compare planted plots to untouched ones. This involved spending lots of time on our hands and knees looking for the little things, who of course where perfectly camouflaged in the leaf litter or the tree trunks!

·         Fungal study: Understand the main fungus present in different parts of the forest. And you needed good vision to see the tiny fungus happily eating away at fallen trees.