So I am headed to Mozambique this summer to conduct senior thesis research. I'll be there for two months and I leave on Saturday! I just started getting my stuff together for packing this afternoon, so everything seems a bit more real. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post on here while I'm there, but I'm going to try my best to get pictures up here.
I thought I'd start off blogging this summer by sharing part of the project summary that I wrote when applying for funding to support my research.
In the early 1970s, Kenneth Tinley
surveyed the plant community on floodplain at Gorongosa National Park in
Mozambique (Tinley, 1977). He found it
was grass-dominated. The abundant
grasses provided food for the buffalo, wildebeest and zebra at the park; in turn,
the herbivores prevented woody species and forbs (non-grass plants) from
encroaching. From 1977-1992, Mozambique
was ravaged by civil war. Soldiers and
poachers killed 90-100% of the individuals of all large mammal species for both
food and ivory. Today, restoration
efforts are underway to bring back the variety and abundance of mammals that
were once found there.
Has the loss of
herbivores altered the park’s important floodplain plant communities? In 2013, members of Rob Pringle’s lab in the
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) department completed a re-survey of the
floodplain. They found that there had been a shift in the plant ecosystems there. Further studies are being conducted to try to
explain what caused this shift and what is maintaining
it, as well as whether the new communities will continue to be able
to support a large herbivores.
Although most of the
mammals in the park were lost as a result of human conflict, waterbuck have
staged a spectacular recovery and now exist and roughly ten times their pre-war
number.
They are dominating the recovering park’s mammal community like never
before. What might this dramatic shift
in herbivores mean for park vegetation, and how might it affect the recovery of
non-waterbuck animals? The floodplain communities observed by members of the Pringle lab might not be
able to support the number and variety of animals that were found there in the
past. I will investigate the role
waterbuck are playing in the shift to see how they
might be maintaining it. It is important
to better understand how and why this shift occurred in order for restoration
efforts to be successful. Every bit of
research conducted at Gorongosa helps with these efforts, and the efforts made
in the park are leading to new methods and ideas that could help with the
restoration of ecosystems all over the world.
My project will
involve a lot of time watching the waterbuck feed to find out how long they
spend in different vegetation types. Observations
will take place at randomly chosen locations that have both grass and forbs
across the floodplain. Following the
focal animal sampling technique by Altmann (1974), an individual waterbuck will
be randomly chosen for observation. The
gender of the individual will be recorded, as will the amount of time spent on
different activities (i.e., feeding, resting, being alert) over thirty minute
observation periods.
That's a pretty good overview of what I'll be looking at this summer. I'm going to Gorongosa National Park and I'll be staying in the Wilson Lab. Like I said, my parents will take me to the airport on Saturday, and my flight leaves in the evening. From there I go to London, where I'll have some time to explore. Then to Johannesburg, South Africa, and finally to Beira, Mozambique. Then it's a few hour drive to get to the park--I should arrive on Monday afternoon (Beira time, which is 6 hours ahead of EST).
Right now it's nearly bed time and the next time I post will likely be from Gorongosa. Good night!
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