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rain forest remote sensing geoglyphs ecology earth works bamboo archeology AmazonResearch projects 2
Hundreds of geoglyphs, geometrically formed man-made earth works, have only recently been found in southwestern Brazilian Amazonia and adjacent Bolivia. Geoglyphs occur in an area that partly overlaps with bamboo-dominated forests that are exceptional rain forests because they are dominated by a single species. The aim of the project is to find out if there is a causal relationship between bamboo forests and geoglyphs.
Team
Risto Kalliola, Martti Pärssinen, Pirjo K. Virtanen, Kalle Ruokolainen
Because of the huge species diversity of Amazonian forests, it has been difficult to obtain a general idea of their environmental and floristic variation among sites. This makes it difficult to allocate suitable land uses to areas with different productivity, to adapt the management systems to local ecological conditions, and to identify habitats of high conservation value. Understorey plants (such as pteridophytes) can be used as indicators to rapidly and at relatively low cost evaluate the ecological conditions and species composition of a given rain forest site. The present project will design a species identification tool that conveys to the users of the indicator species approach 1) the knowledge on how to identify the indicator species, and 2) the information on what kind of environment or forest each species indicates. In order to be useful for people who are not plant specialists, the identification tool will be interactive, easy to use, free of botanical jargon, richly illustrated and freely available on the internet.
Team
Hanna Tuomisto, Gabriela Zuquim, Glenda Cárdenas