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This man did a fantastic job brushing the line during the inventory work at Tikon. I say this for two reasons. First, many of the transects went through dense stands of pyant kyein (Calamus nambariensis Becc.; shown above) with tons of spines, and opening the space was a bit prickly, to say the least. Second, he came to work both days in shorts. And was always smiley and cheerful. [NOTE: I am ready to go back to this marvelous place].
A group of mescaleros from the village of Acateyahualco in Guerrero, Mexico (see Meeting in Acateyahualco) getting their equipment ready to start the annaul agave inventories. They got new GSP receivers, and the new devices have a 22 channel two-way radio built in. Will be a great help in the field once everyone figures out how they work. [NOTE: Love the collection of sombreros].
Original Post: Camera Shy Date: January 26, 2009 at 9:07 AM
This little guy had good handwriting and was really careful recording the data from the forest inventory. Very serious and focused...until he saw me with the movie camera. [NOTE: I am continuing the retrospective in this category for one more week].
Original Post: Tapajós-Arapiuns Date: September 5, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Several caboclo communities in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve wanted to start a small furniture business using selected timbers from the forest. To do so, they needed to prepare and submit a formal management plan to IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources. They had no idea how to do this. I did, however, and so in mid-2004, in collaboration with IPAM and with support from the Overbrook Foundation, I started working with a couple of communities in the reserve to collect the baseline data needed to write a management plan.
The video was shot during the forest inventory and growth analysis work conducted by villagers from Nugini. The fieldwork involved 18 people who worked for 8 days, encountered 5 poisonous snakes, established 1,000 sample plots, and counted and measured 3,452 trees from 42 different species. More information about the Oficinas Caboclas do Tapajos and their forestry operations within the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve can be found here or here.
[NOTE: The management plan for Nugini was submitted to IBAMA and approved, and the community is now harvesting furniture woods from a 100 hectare management area on a sustained-yield basis.]
The blackboard during one of the first community meetings in the Tapajós project (see Tapajós-Arapiuns). Shows a list of the timber species that the villagers want to include in the forest inventory. Can't remember what the circles and astericks mean, or why some species, e.g. ipê and morototó, have both. I also can't remember the signficance of the line drawing to the lower right. Keep the transects on bearing so they don't cross the previous survey line? Pace back from a tree to measure its height? And the dotted semi-circle? [NOTE: Everything seemed so clear at the time].
Dividing up provisions among the field crews before heading out to the forest to start the inventory work (see Field Crews and Western Borneo). Mostly bags of rice, salt, and cooking oil, but it looks like we also took a lot of cans of Coke. [NOTE: I think the name of this Dayak village is Darok in the Bonti sub-province. I think].
Spent the weekend before Hurricane Sandy up in the Catskills at Camp Deerpark running inventory transects to update the allowable cut calculations in the management plan (see Tree Markingand Elias Drops a White Pine). My crew did 48 plots, i.e. 9,600 square meters of inventory, and had a great two days shuffling through the autumn leaves counting and measuring trees.
Walked by what used to be an old field and saw that it had been turned into a log yard. That's the red Wood Miser portable sawmill in the background. Very proud of how the Camp has taken to the sustainable forestry concept. Useful example of what a small, faith-based organization can do with 100 hectares of forest. Great job, guys.
A key feature of good inventory transects is that they follow a straight line. Wonderful things happen when you walk a straight line through the forest. Keeping the transect on the right bearing is accomplished through the judicious use of a compass, in this case, a Silva Ranger compass.
Once you get the first two or three transect stakes in position, you can put the compass away and just use back sights to keep the stakes lined up. Continual use of the compass (or GPS) will cause the line to zig-zag (see Believe Your Eyes).
Image above shows U Myint Maung, Warden of the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, keeping our rattan transect on course (see Hukaung Valley Rattan Survey)
The first thing you need to do if you want to manage a wild population of rattan plants is to quantify the number and size of individuals in the population. This is accomplished by conducting a forest inventory. I spent the last two days in the village of Sobphouan in Bolikhamsai Province, Laos training WWF project staff (see Management Planning) how to do this. As is shown above, the first step in the inventory is to lay out out a 20 m line along a designated bearing in the forest. We used a bearing of 270º and a line of bright red nylon.
The next step is to carefully look within a 5 m strip on either side of the red line for rattan plants. Operational word here is "carefully". This step can be tedious, but it is important to go slow and not miss any plants.
The final step is to record the species and size of each rattan encountered in a fieldbook. Three simple steps that can ultimately make the difference between sustainable management and resource depletion. [NOTE: That's Bansa Thammavong (WWF Laos) and Le Viet Tam (WWF Vietnam) laying out the line; Ou Ratanak's (WWF Cambodia) hand is holding the fieldbook (thx, guys)].
Naw Sein (see Naw Sein) casually holds the rope at the plot stake - and has a smoke - during the inventory of the Village Management Area outside of Shinlonga (see The Last Stake) in northern Kachin State, Myanmar. [NOTE: All of the palms in the background are spiny rattans, which suggests that this was probably a pretty horrible plot].
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 at 9:45AM 
