We’ve had three full days here in Uruguay already, which seems completely unreal. We’ve managed to check all my permanent field sites, as well as get our field gear, our field truck, and buy essentials like a knife, cookies, and some modems so we can more reliably use the internet at the house.
The area around my permanent study sites is currently scheduled to be thinned, but they kindly allowed us to identify our study areas and the immediate forest area that we wanted to keep undisturbed. Juliana, the most awesome field technician ever, went out and marked a perimeter around my study areas with yellow paint on all the trees in a very large square. She then spoke with the operations manager, and also communicated via email to make sure they understood.
This is what we found at one of the sites. Needless to say, the downed trees are not supposed to be there. Once we saw it we let Juliana and others know, and their response immediate and awesome. Juliana took the operations out again the next day to all of my sites to demonstrate further what she wanted done. I don’t think I’d want to be on the receiving end of that. J
The rest of the sites are just fine. One site has been correctly thinned around, and three others have yet to thinned nearby. Hopefully the rest will work out just fine.
Everything else is going well, and we’re off to a great start.
That's the biggest challenge with any R&D project.
ReplyDelete