Field Work: Complete

I plan for this blog had been to post from the field with continuation afterwards on mangrove research. This plan was foiled by the lack of internet access, save at very slow speeds. How slow? I would regularly take me 30 minutes to check my email with 10 messages. Overall my first field trip to Galapagos was a success. I learned a substantial amount about mangroves in the Galapagos, made observations about patterns of species zonation and growth, met with our collaborators at the Charles Darwin Station and collected numerous ground truthing points to be used in the coming year to generate preliminary relationships between remote sensing and the ground. Some interesting things I noted in the field - 1) one of our field sites is a lagoon covered under the RAMSAR convention for wetland protection. 2) The mangroves really host a diverse range of fauna, terrestrial and marine and are an crucial nursery habitat - I observed schools of small fish and shrimp larva in the mangrove swamps out of the reach of predatory birds and other animals. 3) There is an invasive mangrove species in the Galapagos - this information comes to me from one of the local guides who learned it during his last training from the National Park but I have not been able to confirm it (scientists at the Charles Darwin Station seemed unaware of it).

Unfortunately I was unable to really explore the two other large Islands of Santa Cruz and San Cristobal (I never made it to the latter) because of illness. Luckily I recovered quickly and didn´t require medical attention, but had a few very miserable days which I spent reading in the shade at the hotel.

I am in Quito now, going to the Universidad de San Francisco Quito to meet by former labmate and current collaborator on this project. The altitude and weather have been a big change from Galapagos.

Hola de Isabela

The island of Isabela is remote. Not only did it require four flights (4 stop overs) and two days of travel, but there is not access to high speed internet. This is the first time that blogger has loaded for me (I've tried over several days) just to post text, and as such there won't be any picutres until I return state side. I also won't be posting much either.

So far the trip has gone very well; good progress on the research front. Had two days with one of our collaborators, Birgit, who gave us a tour of the mangroves, and described her field work to us. I've started taking ground truthing and other data from some sights easily accessible from town. I've also had a chance to do some "fun" things such as swim with marine iguanas, snokel with penguins and sea lions and all kinds of beautiful tropical fish, snorkels in the mangrove swamps, and I've done lots of photography (approx 700 photos) of all of these things. Todays great delight was watching hundreds of boobies dive for fish just 100 feet off the shore (lots of photos).

I'm eating well (lots of rice with fish, chicken or beef), trying to stay protected from the sun (lucky so far), avoiding the insects (only two fire ant bites) and getting enough work done. Back to the beach!

Introduction

I've started this blog to document my travels and research in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. I am a Ph.D student at the University of North Carolina, in the Dept. of Geography, working in the Landscape Characterization and Spatial Analysis Lab under the supervision of Steve Walsh. As I have just completed the first year of the Ph.D program, my research objective have not been concretely defined, but my research interests are plant ecology dynamics, feedbacks between plants and the environment, advanced remote sensing techniques, and computer modeling as pertain to mangrove forests in the Galapagos Islands. This summer I will be traveling to the Galapagos Islands (namely Isabela, Santa Cruz, and San Cristobal) for exploratory research - to investigate the current state of mangrove forests in the Galapagos, collect sample field data for the calibration of remote sensing imagery, and to meet my collaborators in the Galapagos.

I will be leaving on Wednesday to join Steve in the Galapagos to meet with scientists at the Charles Darwin Research Station to examine and discuss our research objectives in the coming years. Thus forthcoming posts through the month of June will be posted from the field, after which this blog will continue as a professional posting of my research.