Sam Moore

News of a very exciting new article in Biogeosciences Discussions lead by Brigitte Nyirambangutse, from the GEM plots in Nyungwe National Park in south-western Rwanda, 'Carbon stocks and dynamics at different successional stages in an Afromontane tropical forest'. Brigitte is keen to have comments from as wide an audience as possible, so please disseminate widely!
Congratulations Brigitte!
PDF is attached and here is the link for interactive discussion (available until 1st Nov 2016): http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/bg-2016-353/

Hi Jhon,

Sorry for the delay in responding to you - the reason for this is that we are currently undergoing a review of how we analyse hemispherical photos. Essentially, for all the reasons you mention above regarding 'optical centre', 'angular resolution' etc...and moreover the calibration process that is now required in CAN-EYE, we are moving to a different, freely downloadable software analysis program called Hemisfer (http://www.wsl.ch/dienstleistungen/produkte/software/hemisfer/download_EN) - the free version is fully functional (as well as far more intuitive than CAN-EYE), the only limitation being it's resolution limits. We are in the process of purchasing a number... More

A few snaps from our recent soil sampling campaigns in Ghana and Gabon late last year (2014). Nutrient samples were collected from cores and bulk density samples from soil pits at regular depth intervals down to 2 meters. All samples are now either in transit, or in the Leeds University soil labs for analysis, following the Rainfor standard protocols which will enable pan-tropical comparisons. Detailed soil profiles were also taken from each soil pit, of which we had 2 at each of our 3 field sites in Ghana and 3 field sites in Gabon. A huge thank you to both... More

Hi Jhon - Happy New Year!

As far as I'm aware, the high pitched sound has no other purpose other than to indicate that the chamber is flushing, hold in air. More important is that you can here the fan in the SRC whirring, indicating that it is working and indeed mixing the air inside the SRC.

Do you have access to another EGM and SRC unit? If so, it would be nice to take repeat measurements and check for agreement. If not, do you know when the EGM was last serviced/re-calibrated? Have you troubleshooted everything else (p73 of manual)... More

Hi Erika - I just checked the manual (sorry, I should have done this before) and I think you might be mis-reading it - basically, the legs need to be cut 1.5 m long, so that 0.5 m can be stuck into the ground, resulting in the litter trap tray standing at 1.0 m height. Does that make sense?
Cheers,
Sam

Hi Erika - just had a quick chat with Toby and we can't see any reason why you shouldn't reduce it to 1.20 m. Some of my litter traps in places with high elephant population densities are placed on the ground to prevent them being knocked over - each site has its own obstacles!
Cheers,
Sam

Hi Jhon,

I'm sat next to Toby and he asked me to try and answer this for you as I've been using them far more recently than he has.

Firstly, when you say it sounds during pre-measurement, are you referring to the high pitched tone, or the sound of the fan flushing the chamber? I've never experienced not hearing the high pitched tone before, but I think so long as you can hear the fan flushing the chamber, that is the most important part of pre-measurement calibration and it should be OK and if the results look reasonable, then this... More

Hi Jhon, apologies for the slow response to this. I myself use an ancient Nikon Coolpix 4500 and attach a Nikon Fisheye FC-E8 converter lens on it, so I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with the EOS 60D. However, I know that you normally have to go into settings and change the lens type to 'fisheye' - normally there are 2 fisheye settings, one is 'full frame' and the other is 'standard' - it sounds to me like you may have it on the 'full frame' setting, which would cut off the corners as you describe. Try changing the lens type settings,... More

The Terrestrial-LiDAR team spent a month in Gabon scanning various plots, including some of the GEM plots in Mondah and Lope. This link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlKVSIoWK1I#t=27) shows a 3D 'fly-through' of our Angak plot in Lope, showing the forest structure in great detail. From this, we can calculate the DBH, height, branch structure etc etc etc...of every tree in the plot! Incredible! You can also scan anything you want, including friendly camp elephant, Billy ;)

Sweat bees! Harmless to the body, very damaging to the mind! Sure...I'll upload soon :)