Mas Eucalipto

On Thursday, we went out to find more Eucalyptus sites again with Juliana, and ended up actually getting to all of the rest of the sites on my list. Some are much further out than we’re used to, but it’s nice to see new areas.

We started the day by getting stuck when Juliana tried to turn off a “secondary” road onto a “primary” road. Really these terms are relative, since all the roads that aren’t actual highways are dirt roads. Juliana called the local land manager to see if he was in the area, and since he was, he started on his way to help get us out. In the meantime, Scott manned up and helped Juliana rock the truck back and forth by pushing it from the back, and he managed to get it moving again. We gave him a round of applause and a lot of appreciation. J

We also got some help from a gaucho and his nine working dogs on closing a fence. We had never seen this many dogs with a gaucho before; usually there are a couple dogs with a gaucho that help herd the livestock they are trying to move, but this guy must have been super productive with all of his workers.

Most of the sites we located will work just fine for my study, so I was happy. We found all of the post-harvest sites, which look similar to clearcuts in the US. It is interesting, because clearcuts are such an ugly site, and usually have a very negative connotation associated with them. In this country, however, they are actually closer to the original landscape than the forested stands are, since none of this area had forests before these plantations were established. It will be very interesting to compare the vegetation in these post-harvest sites to some native grassland sites, and see what kind of recovery occurs after a full rotation of trees have been at these sites.

One of our sites is adjacent to one of the rural schools that are common around the area. I think it will be fun to sample this site and be able to see and hear schoolchildren as they ride their horses to school and home, and play outside during the day. I’m sure they’ll be a little confused at the gringos in orange vests squatting and looking at plants right next to their school.