iiap - Iquitos Research Institute

We went to iiap – the Research Institute in Iquitos this morning. First we met with a man named Ricardo who helps to organise all the boats and logistics for researchers. Freddie and Wayne spoke to him about boat availability and organised dates for their next trips into the field. We then met a guy called Dennis Del Castillo Torres, who is the director of iiap. He had a great knowledge of the forest - particularly Aguajales. Lots of this type of forest is being destroyed and used to grow oil palm on. Many Peruvians see Aguajales as a waste of land and pointless. This is because they do not see any short term profit from it. However, Aguajales are ecosystems with great importance. For one thing, they store carbon and if destroyed this carbon will be released into the atmosphere. In addition, the forests regulate water and provide many ecosystem services regionally and globally. Dennis works with scientists in order to protect the forest. The more papers that are published the better as they provide scientific proof to how important the areas are and the necessity of protecting them.  The government and local people need to understand and see the scientific research showing the importance of the forest in order to want to protect it. At the moment people are concerned with profit. Dennis had to persuade the owner of quisakotcha zoo not to destroy the Aguajales, she wanted to expand the zoo. The only way he could do this was by saying scientific tourism will bring money into the area. Researchers will come and spend money to study the area. In this way the owner saw the benefit of protecting the Aguajales. He did not argue for the ecosystem benefit as this would not have worked as the lady would not have seen any economic benefit in the short term. 

Wayne’s work looks at the gas emissions that forests give off. In quistakotcha there is a secondary forest and grass areas due to human impact. So Wayne wants to get data from the areas affected by humans and the natural areas in order to show the difference. If the data difference is drastic enough then it will ultimately help to protect the area. I asked if there was a balance that could be made where humans can use the forest and impact it without destroying it. Freddie said not really as the ecosystems are so fragile and must not be disturbed. The best solution would be if projects were put in place to protect the area and make them national parks. For example, if REDD funded a project to protect the area and allowed locals to live there still but had rules and regulations in place. The inhabitants would be compensated for this so could get by.

We then went for lunch and when we got back Freddie’s PHD friend Jacob was there. His work looks into birds and floristic compositions. Freddie seemed keen to pair up with him to do some work which sounded cool.  Jacob was interested in writing a paper about comparing deforestation footprints.  For example, it might be better to efficiently extract oil in a way which causes the least damage possible than to use an area of forest to farm cattle. To make the same profit a larger area of land must be destroyed to farm cattle than to extract oil.

I helped Freddie do some more data input into excel spread sheets. I read the figures and species names and Freddie typed it into excel.

Went to Kekiricks for dinner – yummy chicken and chips and chaufa. 

www.iiap.org.pe

Pinch, punch, first of the month

I can’t believe it is already July. Today the guy Freddie did some field work with last year named Wayne arrived. So I met him. He is really friendly and a funny guy. He said I could go out with him one day to see how his field work differs from Freddie’s. This will be really cool and great to see. I don’t need any encouragement to go back into the jungle. I will certainly make the most of any opportunities that come my way.  Today is Omar’s last day in Iquitos so we had dinner all together and said bye to him.

Data entry

We had an early breakfast in the Amazon Bistro. I had bread, jam and cheese, which was nice. Then when we got back I sewed Freddie’s jeans for him as they had a massive rip. I really enjoy sewing and may take it up when I get home. Later on I helped Freddie with data entry. I read the data sheets and Freddie typed it out on an Excel spread sheet. His handwriting is very hard to read. I think for his birthday which is in a few days I need to give him some handwriting lessons! By reading the sheets out I began to come familiar with family, genus and species names and groups

Manatee farm

Freddie, Omar and I went to the Manatee farm today. Manatees are sea cows. The farm took in injured manatees that had been cut by machetes or injured by boats. The people at the farm then helped them recover and feed them. They also breed, so the farm had baby manatees. Then when they are older they will be released back into the river. When they are young they are fed extremely expensive milk and when they are adults they have green leaves. When they are young they shed their skin. We fed the manatees. This project is brilliant as it saves manatees and prevents them from being killed or dying in rivers as they are properly looked after. However, when they are eventually released they won’t be scared of humans as they have such close interactions with us. This means that they may be easily hunted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee

Ecology Lesson

I had an ecology lesson today from Freddie and these are my typed up notes from it:

Tropical rainforest ecology:

Subsiding basins or sinking areas can cause a difference in environmental conditions. There will be more water and so can be peat land. Peat lands can also form near rivers. There will be little magnesium and potassium in these areas so low biodiversity. Harsh environment.

In peat areas lots of different communities - dwarf forests etc.

Why diff from each other?

-seed dispersal, close together, similar.

- flooding regimes.

-nutrient status

So different gradients in flooding, nutrients, acidity.

Peatland forests are not seen to be diverse so not protected/ conserved. But there could be endemic species and lots of carbon stored in peat so very important.

The majority of tropical forests are terrifermia forests. Green on Landsat image. Solid/ dry ground. This has a high biodiversity as rivers sediments supply the area with nutrients.

Other areas - White sand forests - remnant patches- very old areas. In the Miocene geological events caused clay to be laid down. White sand was exposed over a long time. So specialist species evolved. Sometimes these specialist species may be found in other areas not White sand forests - great interest to researchers.

Rivers move a lot/ change their course. So where they go they may remove peat that was there.

There are similarities between peat land and White forest areas.

Hydrology of amazonia is changing. Droughts and floods more common. Peatlands more responsive to hydrological change than terrifermia forest. Droughts trees die - carbon lost. But replaced by species that can survive. There will be compositional shifts in forests. They could change the way carbon is stored. Peatlands reliant on being flooded. If peat dries it decomposes as oxygen available so aerobic respiration can occur. Normally aerobic respiration. Methantrophic bacteria breaks down things. Methanogenesis - uses methane instead of air to break things down much slower process so peat remains. Peat will decompose very quickly if it is dried out. Human impacts palm oil farming they dry the peat out. Increase decomposition. That's what has happened in s.e Asia. Also then peat is dry forest fires increase. Dissolved carbon doc in drained peat easily leaves the soil in flooding events in solution. So if floods increase peatland could either sequester more carbon or doc could be washed out of it. Carbon is labile in peat (not locked up/ mobile) 

1970s how the forests change long term looked into. Forest plots set up where 1 hectare 100 x 100 biomass measured repeatedly. Found to increase over 30 years. Trees grow bigger. 2 hypothesises:

Co2 fertilisation - increase emissions. In p.s co2 limiting factor. lots of h2o and sun in forests. So c02 increase hence increase growth rate. Increase turnover increase dying and re-growing.

Disturbance hypothesis - winds, trees fall, gap in forest where trees killed. Pioneer species takes over rapidly growing, mid stage species takes a long time to get back. Disturbance more grows. Residual effect of disturbance never reaches equilibrium. Forest always responding to past disturbance.

Or - remote sensing - generated ho often blow down occurs in given area. Said to be every 4,000 yrs in 1 hectare so not constantly responding to disturbance so can be equilibrium.

Temperate forest in north USA - pumped co2 into forest to see effect. Strong effect for 2 yes but then other factors became limiting e.g. potassium.

Flux towers - measures co2 in and out of forest. Sonic anometer - measures co2 sequested that goes in and out how much co2 stays. Look at how much they match. Amount taken in by plants. Co2 fertilization won't go on for ever. Changes in temp may cause loses. Drought 2010 aided trees to die

PHDs

We went to Iiap research centre this morning in hope of talking to some people. Unfortunately, they were not there. Apparently they will be there on Monday. So we returned back to the hostel.  I went to the supermarket and chilled for a bit. Spoke to Omar and Freddie about PHDs. They both enjoy being at the forefront of their field and research work. It is where it is all happening, so is really exciting. The pay is not the best and the work is really hard but it is rewarding and you could get some breaking papers published if you get the right data. It is what they find interesting and so enjoy it. However, they said sometimes it takes over your life as there is not much structure. You just work for as long as you can or want to, so can easily end up working longer hours than is expected of you. Then we spoke about climate change. Omar had the pessimistic view that reducing co2 emissions now is pointless. China has the population of 1.3 billion and is not going to make any efforts to change and reduce emissions; they are too concerned with development.  So no matter how hard European countries try to be efficient, China will inhibit this effort and carry on as business as usual. 

Quistakotcha Zoo

We took the bus to Quistakotcha zoo today. The bus was made out of wood. There was a lot of traffic. The zoo had puma’s jaguars, alligators, monkeys, birds and fish. Some of the animals were kept in really small cages which was sad to see.  There was a lake in the middle which had sand put around the outside making it into a mini beach. We went into the lake for a swim which was really fun. There were lots of little biting fish which nibbled on our dead skin cells. We played volley ball and piggy in the middle in the lake which was good fun. Then a load of children surrounded us and wanted to play with us as well. Later on we had lunch and kicked the football around for a minute. Until I kicked Louis by mistake in the shin and injured my toe so I had to sit it out. We chilled in the lake for a bit longer - then went back to the hostel. I strapped my toe up but it was pretty painful.

Quistakotcha was an interesting area. At the other side of the lake to where we were there is an Aguajales. Sand was imported to create the ‘beach’ area. This will inevitably have affected the ecosystem in the area. The zoo was beneficial in a way as it protects the forest animals. If ever they were over hunted the animals in the zoo could be bred and released. So in a way they act as a gene bank. However, the negative aspect of the zoo was the way in which some of the animals were kept – in limited spaces. The pumas for instance were kept in cages which were much too small for them. Also it can’t be good to keep these animals out of their natural habitat. Against this, it does at least bring tourists to the area and provides a profit which is no bad thing.