A month ago I arrived in Libreville, the capital city of Gabon following a short flight over the Atlantic, from Ghana. I have been working with our project collaborators organisation de l’Agence Nationale des parcs Nationaux (ANPN) in two 1 hectare plots situated within Mondah forest, one of our four sites here in Gabon.
As of when I arrived, both of these plots had been identified and marked out. The team decided that the best use of our time would be to install everything in these two plots and in doing so, go through all the installation methods in the entire protocol – quite some challenge! However, proximity to Libreville and it’s relatively easy access has allowed us to spend almost all of our working hours in the Mondah plots themselves, installation only pausing for a morning here, or an afternoon there when trips to the shops are required to buy material for the next piece of kit to be installed.
In the middle of April, a couple of members of the ANPN team and I will travel inland to Lope and Ivindo to continue with installation at these sites. Therefore time is running out at the Mondah plots and in order to run through all the protocols, I have decided to demonstrate the remaining protocols in one of the plots as opposed to attempting to complete installation in both. We are installing some soil partitioning tubes this week and I believe I am right in saying that we will be the first team across the RAINFOR-GEM network to experiment with 1 um mesh (to allow more lateral movement of water) in an attempt to overcome the problems of water-logging within 'windowless' tubes, experienced by so many of you – we will, of course, keep you posted on the results!
I will upload some of the most recent photos from Mondah and get back to you with more from Lope and Ivindo!
All best,
Sam
