The Goda Massif in Djibouti covers about 3000 hectares and holds the remnants of a cloud forest of Juniperus procera. The forest been dying for the last century, most probably because of overgrazing brought about by the change in Afar lifestyle after the foundation of the city of Djiboutivile some 150 years ago. This has resulted in a reduction in recruitment over the last 100 years and a complete loss over the last 50. The forest is now 85% dead. We have surveyed the forest and are planning a major restoration project.

The critically endangered Bankouale palm has its only sites in Djibouti concentrated around springs here in the Goda Massif. A genetic analysis has been made of the Bankouale populations and seed for conservation has been given to 6 Botanic gardens, and the Millennium SeedBank, Wakehurst Place. In Bankouale, gardens have been established along many of these sites over the last 20 years and we hope to use these in future restoration projects.

These projects are funded by the British Ecological Society Small Ecological Grant Programme and the International Palm Society, and the Darwin Initiative

I am a Quaternary scientist with wide ranging interests. My current research focus is Neotropical palaeoecology, I have study sites from the Andes to the Amazon and particular interests in vegetation-human-climate interactions and biogeography.

The main project I am currently involved in is examining glacial - interglacial cycles as recorded in sediment from Lake Titicaca (Bolivia/Peru). This work is being carried out in collaboration with Mark Bush (Florida Institute of Technology, USA). I submitted my PhD thesis on the "Characterization of Neotropical ecosystems by their modern pollen spectra" at the University of Leicester in December 2003.

I currently hold a Research Councils UK Academic Fellowship in "Ecosystem Science" at The Open University.

Personal web site: http://www3.open.ac.uk/earth-sciences/palaeo/
Neotropical Paleoecology Research Group web site: http://research.fit.edu/bushlab/

My research centres on the causes and consequences of plant biodiversity, mainly in tropical rainforests. In particular I am interested in understanding the role that pathogens and herbivores play in shaping plant communities. I use a combination of field work, statistical methods, modelling and more recently molecular techniques.

My first encounter with tropical ecology involved research on carbon and nutrient cycling at Sepilok Forest Reserve in Sabah, Malaysia. I worked on litterfall, decomposition and leaf demography there as part of the Biotic Interactions of Tropical Rainforests programme. I then moved on to investigate spatial dynamics of trees within the 50 ha Forest dynamics plot in Pasoh Forest Reserve in Peninsula Malaysia. I have since expanded this work to include data from forest plots at Sinharaja World Heritage Site, Sri Lanka, Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. The research at all these sites is coordinated by the Centre for Tropical Forest Science (http://www.ctfs.si.edu).

For my PhD I worked on the effects of herbivores on Dipterocarp recruitment and diversity in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, in Sabah Malaysia (http://www.searrp.org/danum.cfm). I investigated herbivore mediated density dependence and the effects that logging might have. My current work asks how fungal pathogens affect seedling survival and plant community diversity in the Chiquibul Forest in Belize, Central America (http://www.mayaforest.com/).

Dr Robert Bagchi
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PS

I am a Biologist, currently doing my Doctorate research at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University. My interests focus on tropical forest ecosystems and human dimensions, more specifically in the Amazon.

Initially I focused on large scale regional studies, looking at natural and anthropogenic land cover dynamics. At the National Institute for Space Research (INPE, 2002 to 2004) used satellite derived data to study the Southern Brazilian Amazon, in Mato Grosso State – where I worked on many field work expeditions. As part of a collaboration in the LBA project (Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia) I worked in the University of Maryland where my work related to deforestation processes, including a validation for the DETER system (Near real time deforestation detection project), the development of new methodologies to study vegetation phenology and the detection of burn scars, and techniques for land cover mapping using multitemporal data.

In my Ph.D. I am investigating the integration of remote sensing techniques with field ecological data to generate new approaches to the remote sensing of tropical forests. Initially, I evaluated the landscape context of the RAINFOR field sites, to test whether the regional variations in wood productivity, wood specific density and biomass attributed to the RAINFOR network could be driven by landscape biases in plot location. Currently, I am evaluating the canopy stress/resilience of the Amazon forest during the 2005 drought. Subsequently, I will investigate the structural parameters of the vegetation in relation to spectral properties of remote sensing data and investigate the rate of deforestation of primary forest conversion in the Amazon in a multi-temporal time series. This will explore drivers and evaluate the role of conservation areas in the different regions. Using my field data to validate the land cover change maps and information about the fate of the deforested areas, I will combine the data on forest structural properties and land cover change to model carbon emissions in the Amazon. This research will contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between the tropical forest and the global carbon cycle and carbon budget.

Oxford University Centre for the Environment
Dyson Perrins Building
South Parks Road,
Oxford, UK
email liana.anderson@ouce.ox.ac.uk

One of the great mysteries of ecology is how so many species are maintained in tropical rain forests. More tree species can be found in a single hectare of rain forest in Borneo than in the whole of Europe or North America. How can so many species co-exist? The answer is not simple, and is likely to be found in the complex web of interactions between tree species and their environment. The BITRF (Biological Interactions in Tropical Rain Forests) project was established to investigate the impacts of many factors on the growth and survival of trees seedlings in Sabah, Malaysia. These included the influence of soil conditions, light availability, pathogens, herbivores and mycorrhizae. The seedling stage is thought to be the crucial phase in structuring rain forests, as a large number of species compete to fill gaps in the canopy, of which usually only one will survive to become a reproductive adult tree.

BITRF was funded by the British Ecological Society under its Overseas
Research Programme.

I am interested in the dynamics of interactions between individuals and species in various plant communities and how these contribute to species coexistence and the maintenance of species diversity. Rigorous statistical analysis and conservation applications complement the largely field-based nature of my research.

On the Yasuní Forest Dynamics Plot in the lowland rain forest of Amazonian
Ecuador (www.ctfs.si.edu, www.puce.edu.ec/sitios/herbario/YASUNI.htm) I am investigating how variation in abundance between 16 co-occurring species of the common tree family Myristicaceae (nutmegs) affects species coexistence.

In 2002 I initiated a long-term monitoring project of 3500 trees on the FDP.
These are censused annually for flowering and fruiting behaviour. Seedlings are also monitored in plots nested within the FDP. Recent results from this work include studies of the factors affecting flowering frequency and biased sex ratios, the influence of local and community neighbourhoods on seedling survival, and the balance between resource and pollen limitations on reproductive output.
Long-term data on tropical tree phenology is extremely scare, especially at the individual level. My study complements the community-based phenological approach operated at Yasuní by other researchers
(http://striweb.si.edu/esp/tesp/plant_intro.htm).

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