Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Fragmentation of Mabi forests

I realize that most of my posts have been toward the wonderful non-class time that I have experienced while studying abroad here in Australia.  However, a huge reason why I came here was for the classes, cultural experiences and to really understand how rainforests work. 

Its been about 4 weeks since I have arrived here at the Centre and classes are almost at the mid mark.

So what have I been recently doing?

This past week was devoted to the impacts of climate change and fragmentation on rainforest structure; as well as its flora and fauna.  This is of course is particular to the Wet Tropics region of North Queensland.
One of the most interesting aspects about this week was our field excursions, relating to fragmentation.  The rest of the students and I all visited actual places around the Atherton Tablelands that were being effected or rather affected by fragmentation.  Most of the clearing of rainforests here in Australia has completely ceased (since 1988 World Heritage Listing occurred) , which is good; but what is left now, is the forests in fragments of all sorts of sizes and shapes.  This is what most of the field lecture contained, moreover it covered how fragmentation affects species composition, ecological processes and if these fragments will remain stable.  We had the chance to look at three fragmented forests and all of these forest fragments visited were Mabi forests of various sizes and shapes.  Mabi is considered endangered ecosystems (which I never knew could occur), because of how heavily fragmented they are across the Wet Tropics region and because they only occur here (endemic).  Another interesting fact is that these forest fragments also contain certain species like the Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo (which are endemic to North Queensland and only occur in Mabi forests) and if these rainforests disappear or collapse so could these cute little marsupials (if you dont know what a Lumholtz's is, look it up...its so freaking cute, yes they are marsupials).

That is all I can write about for now..so much more to post but so little time.  I am actually going out for a second night of data collection for a field exercise/paper I am writing for my rainforest ecology class.  We are catching cane toads and then dissecting them.

Fun times here in the land of OZ.

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