Hoi All,
Just want to let you know that we got the tree identifications for the km55 evergreen seasonal forest. It turns out that we collected 55 tree species there, compared to just 8 in the limestone forests….
Now lets see how things look next year!
Groet
Hoi all,
It’s good to read you all had such a good time during the course and that all of you made it home savely. I still have some problems getting into my normal rithm, the course was keeping me busy all the time and now suddenly its over. Anyway, I hope you all found it useful and can make good use of the things you experienced. I am still busy with some of the data that we collected in the plots…. I seem to be missing a lot of specimens that we collected. Today I will check whether they are still in the drying room.. I did see some piles of plants there that might be ours…..
So you see, I am still doing some course work, its not over completely yet. Lets stay in touch!
Groet
Hoi all,
This was quite an experience for me because normally I make plots in teams of only three or four people, so making plots with 25 or so people at the same time was something different! So it was a learning experience for me as well. Although perhaps a bit chaotic at the start of the first day, I think we did a great job. People cooperated well, and, once it was clear what everybody was supposed to do, the work went quite smoothly. Also, the two locations were nice. First the limestone forest, very steep and with sharp rocks. I was quite supprised how few species of trees we found, only 6 or so! We must have stumbled upon the the least diverse tropical forest plot in the tropics!!! Which is great since most people are always talking about how diverse the tropics are, and then we find this odd one 
Todays plot was more diverse (perhaps we are in the tropics anyway), and the work already went much more organized than yesterday. So although we started later, and collected about 5 times the amount of plants, we still finished the work at about the same time as the day before. I think if we would keep this work up for several more days, we would be able to do several plots (well, at least two) per day!
So now the plants have to be dried and identified, and then we can do some analyses with the data. I hope you have some nice ideas to address next to simple stand structure, composition and diversity analysis…. Lets see what else we come up with…
Many thanks for a job well done! By the way, your plots will be used by next years class, who will return to the plots to measure tree mortality, growth and recruitment. So hopefully we will be able to send you some updates then as well.