London Rendevouz

Since I am spending two months in London (or Kew - which is only barely London), I am trying to take the opportunity of making use of the incredible variety of offers in the city. Last week I attended a talk by the Linnean Society of London, the world's oldest biological society. After rushing there after work, I arrived somewhat late (I walked in the wrong direction when I got out the underground station - this seems to happen to me regularly when I arrive at stations I haven't been to before!)... I was immediately impressed by the imposing building and the portraits of great scientists that walked the halls of the society decades and centuries ago. It therefore came as a bit of a disappointment when the presentation about Blakiston and his travels and 'discovery' of Blakiston's line - a biogeographical barrier between two the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu (same concept as Wallace's Line) ended up being more of a presentation about whom Blakiston met on his travels and with whom these acquaintances and friends of his were related/connected/befriended.
Tonight, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the Nature Live feature at London's Natural History Museum. It's a great initiative for the public to find out about the science at the museum, meet its staff, ask questions, and learn something new. Tonight's session was about how DNA extraction from museum specimens can aid us in our understanding of their present vs. past diversity. A panel of four scientists gave examples of how they use museum information in understanding the changes in populations of specific species, and also aiding the conservation of these species. Amongst the topics brought up was the Save the Tasmanian Devil project, which is sequencing the entire genome of the Tasmanian devils and employing genetics to ensure that captive breeding programmes ensure that the highest possible genetic diversity of the Tasmanian devils remains. These animals are being severely threatened by a cancer that is being transmitted through biting, and has so far proven lethal in every case. The global amphibian decline was also discussed in interesting detail. It was mentioned that in the last 30 or so years, approximately half of the worlds amphibians have been described. Unfortunately, several of these have already gone extinct, or are on the brink of extinction. It makes one wonder how many species of amphibians will quietly disappear without anybody noticing...

Someone sent me this link some weeks ago.

http://www.grist.org/i/assets/2/humble-oil.jpg

The website where this was posted states:

"From a sharp-eyed reader comes this ad for Humble Oil (which later merged with Standard to become, yes, Exxon). It may win the All Time Millenial Award for Maximal Irony. It’s from a 1962 edition of Life Magazine, available on Google Books"

Carbon Maps

I have been looking for a global/African map of carbon storage, and managed to locate two maps that are available. However, both lack accuracy to some degree or other. Another better-looking, but preliminary map was recently printed in Nature. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get hold of the underlying data. Other than that I am well on track with the work here in Stellenbosch.

Visit to South Africa

After the Christmas holidays I will be spending a month in the lab of Belinda Reyers at the CSIR in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where I hope to model the potential for carbon sequestration across the African continent. I hope to gain much from the visit - it sounds like their group is doing a lot of work that relates to my proposed project.

Finished

...literally and figuratively. I handed in my 99-page half-way report this afternoon. It was a good exercise in reflecting on what I had done in the last 17 months of my PhD, and where I'm going the last 19. I realize that I have learnt many skills since my start here and that I have gained much from the courses and experience of my colleagues. On the other hand, I also feel like I haven't managed as much as what I'd hoped to have done by now, and I hope to be able to make up for some of that at least in part in the next part of my PhD.
However, for now I'm exhausted and looking forward to not getting home from work at 11pm every night, and, in the not-so-distant future, a holiday in (hopefully) sunny South Africa.

While preparing for my half-way examination I have been reading up about Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs), particularly in Africa. It's a little disappointing that many of these projects involve planting plantations of exotic eucalypts on large tracts of natural grassland (Jindal et al. 2009). That's just one more reason for me to think that putting a price on carbon isn't such a good idea; it just seems like one evil replacing the other. Having grown up in an area which had largely been transformed from grasslands to monospecific plantations, which harboured very few of the indigenous species and caused many of the streams in the region to almost dry out, I cannot see how these can be considered instruments to 'save the environment'.

I have been reading much about the distribution of African vegetation types - particularly what determines their distribution. It is interesting to go back to the 'old' literature, and discover how people with field knowledge only made the same generalizations that we find today with data obtained using advanced remote sensing techniques, which, in principle, allow us to find statistical relationships without ever putting our foot on the continent. In particular, I am impressed by that seminal work: Frank White's vegetation map of Africa. How one man could have gained an overview of the vegetation of this enormous, and often difficult to travel in, continent, is incredible! On the other hand, eventhough I am working with large-scale datasets, I find that knowing some parts of Africa is immensely helpful for interpreting the patterns I find. I do have to be careful, however, that my interpretation of the results I am obtaining for my studies is not biased towards what I know of southern African (and the little I saw of West African) ecology? I should plan a trip to East Africa soon, I think! :)