Chuck Cannon

Click here for a *kmz file of the research area – if you have Google Earth installed, it will ask to open the file.  This will then ‘fly’ you to our plots!

Experimental forestry is a new thing for me.  I have hardly done ‘experimental’ research before.  The vast majority of my work has been simply observational, taking measurements and collecting samples from natural experiments.  The logging work in Kalimantan was somewhat experimental as there were different treatments but I did not design the treatments beforehand nor direct the logging.  I was simply observing the aftermath of the ‘natural’ behavior of a medium-sized logging company in Indonesia.

In this experiment, we are comparing two treatments – direct seeding and selective thinning.  Of course, there is a control as well, so for each experiment we have three plots.

We hope to slowly build these up through the years.  Next year, we should be able to use seedlings, instead of direct seeding, as seedlings have a much higher chance of establishing than simple seeds.  We also need to do some work in the secondary forest which lies in the center of the new Experimental Forest here at XTBG.  In the past few months, XTBG committed a 64 hectare area to experimental work on restoration forestry.  It includes several different forest types, including rubber, pomelo, and tea plantations.  The secondary forest was under shifting cultivation until about twenty years ago.

Dr. Prasit from Chiang Mai University, Thailand and the Forest Restoration Research Unit joined us for several days, giving two lectures on their program and leading us in the field.  It was his decision, a wise one, I think, to use the pomelo orchard as our second experimental area.  I was planning to work in the secondary forest but he said that that forest is already recovering and what really needs to be restored is the pomelo.  Very correct.

This is a lesson about field work in ecology and conservation.  You can create the most wonderful and well-designed study while sitting at your desk, which makes sense from every angle – but once you actually get out there and start working, you must be willing to re-evaluate your plans.  Other better opportunities will suddenly appear.  Wiser individuals will point out a new angle that you never considered.

So, save those coordinates in the kmz file.  Come and check back in five or ten years and see if things have improved for the better!

Wow – we’re already halfway through the course!  It’s gone by fast.

So fast that I have had very little time to post comments, ideas, and discussions that we’ve been having.  I am going to devote a big chunk of time tomorrow, while the class is down in Mengla to trying to catch up with a few of the more interesting threads.

One thing that I have discovered during the course is that it is far more difficult to run one of these courses from your own home.  We live in the garden and that’s where the course is based.  Normally, during one of these courses, you are isolated far away at a remote field station, so that even though you are not really out of touch (is it possible to be out of touch these days?  …or at least to actually be unable to be in touch?), you are taken out of your normal life.  Now, it seems I have both the daily demands of my office AND the demands of the course.  Oh, well, it seems to be working itself out.

Alright, so now we’ve set up the first plots in our long-term studies and the students have chosen their project themes and are madly working on them tonight before their first day off tomorrow.

I’ll try to fill in some blanks on my ‘day off’ – ha!

We’re actually having a bit of problem with the posting page.  Please finish your proposals and we will work out how to post them.

Proposal format

Each proposal should have the following items in this order.

• Title
• Names of team members
• Introduction, including a brief discussion of relevant literature
• Questions to be answered or Hypotheses to be tested
• Methods (should include all of the following, not necessarily in this order)
  • (HINT: THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!!)
  • describe your sampling protocol and method
  • how many samples are you going to collect
  • where are you going to collect your samples
  • do you have any preliminary data yet?
  • Which data is critical to your question – which data can be considered “additional”
• Schedule (a detailed time line of your activities, answering the following questions)
  • will you collect ‘pilot’ data?
  • Will you have enough time to collect the required data?
  • Estimate how much time you will require analyzing the data
• Discussion
  • What are the potential problems you might face?
  • What are the limitations of your approach?
  • What outputs do you expect?
  • Are you going to require any special assistance completing this project?

Proposal format

Each proposal should have the following items in this order.

• Title
• Names of team members
• Introduction, including a brief discussion of relevant literature
• Questions to be answered or Hypotheses to be tested
• Methods (should include all of the following, not necessarily in this order)
  • (HINT: THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!!)
  • describe your sampling protocol and method
  • how many samples are you going to collect
  • where are you going to collect your samples
  • do you have any preliminary data yet?
  • Which data is critical to your question – which data can be considered “additional”
• Schedule (a detailed time line of your activities, answering the following questions)
  • will you collect ‘pilot’ data?
  • Will you have enough time to collect the required data?
  • Estimate how much time you will require analyzing the data
• Discussion
  • What are the potential problems you might face?
  • What are the limitations of your approach?
  • What outputs do you expect?
  • Are you going to require any special assistance completing this project?

Hi everyone, I really enjoyed the discussions we had tonight.  Glad to see some of you so interested in these topics.  As you can see from the Live! website, we’ve got a new way to continue these discussions.  I am sorry that Surya had to drag me away tonight but please continue to post your ideas, questions, and comments.

Heavy-duty lecture schedule in the morning, across a wide range of topics.  First off, it was biogeography and Ferry did a very good job outlining the overall history of Asian rainforests, through the last 50 million years.  He also connected the theory of island biogeography to the issues of conservation biology, where rainforest habitats have been reduced around the world down to islands of good forests in an ocean of plantations and converted areas.  The ideas of island biogeography are central to effective conservation.

Doug Yu came over from Kunming Institute of Zoology and gave a fascinating lecture on the ethnoecology of Amerindians in Peru and demonstrated how indigenous people, living in forest reserves, who continue to live their traditional lifestyle, can play an important role in protecting the forest, even though they are involved in traditional forms of resource extraction and hunting.

Feng Yulong then provided us with a detailed look at the novel hypothesis about the increased efficiency of N use by invasive species.  From his results, it seems that invasive species are released from herbivory and therefore do not have to invest in defense compounds.  They then increase their photosynthetic rates and can grow to be taller and have larger leaves.  His studies provides many major improvements over previous studies in the details of the analysis.

Doug Yu gave a second lecture on the evolution of mutualisms and gave a very entertaining presentation about the economy of information in symbiotic relationships and how to properly model the transactions between players given unequal knowledge about the situation.  I want to borrow his stripper detector sometime (hey, I don’t have enough money to buy one myself!).

Dr. Yang from the Kunming Institute of Botany gave a compelling survey of the general diversity of fungi in Yunnan.  He described how easy it is to kill yourself by eating wild mushrooms that you cannot identify.  While he finished quickly with his lecture, the students asked many many questions for almost an hour.  Even after he finished, several immediately went up to him and continued to ask questions.  I am very happy to see that Asians are so interested in fungi.  I wish that more people were studying them.

Ferry Slik finished the day with a nice review of the techniques to measure biodiversity and biomass.  Remember, it is very easy to measure biodiversity but it is very difficult to measure it accurately.

The next day, we took a bus from Kunming to the garden.  I slept most of the way…

We have started the course at last!  And everything has gone smoothly so far.

First and foremost, everyone arrived safely!  And no one got stuck in quarantine due to the H1N1 virus.  While a couple of international students had some trouble with luggage and a bit of hassle from immigration and customs, this is not surprising given the large number of flights and students.  I think this is a good sign for the beginning of the course.

The students were alert during the first few lectures after their travels but they certainly started to drift away as we got closer and closer to lunch time during my introductory lecture about conservation and tropical biology.  During Ferry’s lecture on Community Ecology, a lively discussion was started about the processes which lead to the strong latitudinal gradient in species diversity, where equatorial rainforests have substantially higher levels of biodiversity.  As Ferry progressed onto the topic of species co-existence, many of the students asked good questions.

I feel this is another very good sign for the course and the central topic of species co-existence seems like a very good one to return to during the student roundtables.  Loren and I are planning on setting up a “topics” bulletin board so that we can continue these discussions online and share it with the rest of the world.  We can also invite other scientists to comment as well.

I am sure that everyone is excited about the course and many of you will soon be on your way to Xishuangbanna.  We’ve been very busy (okay, mainly Kari) getting all of the details worked out and to have everything ready for your arrival.  I am confident that the course will be a rich and rewarding experience for all of us.

While the AFEC-X program is focused on ‘fieldwork’, it is becoming increasingly easy to maintain access and connection to the internet and the virtual world-at-large and technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in every aspect of science.  We hope to introduce you to some of these technological advances and maybe even explore some new ones!

One of these technological advances we’d like to explore is the use of blogging and ‘virtual’ interaction to create an exciting record of the course and to allow your friends and families to share your experiences.  One of the best things about the idea is that it is “LIVE” – as you can see from the name – we hope to actively update the site almost every day and we invite you, the students, to contribute your ideas, comments, photos, funny stories, and even criticisms.  As usual, please be polite and considerate in your posts.

I think we are going to have a lot of fun over the next four weeks and I really look forward to getting to know each of you.

Have a safe journey and all the best,

Chuck Cannon