August 29, 2009
The End
Well, the internship has ended, and all in all, it has been a great experience. As I prepare to leave for the States, The Paraná Biodiversity Project (PBP) has begun to organize its closing ceremony: funding for the project has officially ended, yet hopefully the programs and agroecological models put in place by the PBR will continue to grow and sustain themselves throughout the state.
Overall, I was impressed with the level of collaboration between the different government agencies involved with the project. Environmental fiscalization agencies, traditionally in conflict with the interests of producers, worked together with EMATER, to provide the technical support required to restore the land in a manner viable and favorable for the producers. State-level agencies, such as SEMA, made frequent and personal visits to municipal organizations and directly to the producers themselves who joined the project. The personal contacts that the PBP has created have formed an interconnected web of familiar and dedicated faces between organizations and municipalities all with the same goal: to restore the biodiversity and natural vegetation of the state of Paraná in a socio-economically conscious manner.
Of course, the restoration of biodiversity corridors throughout the state and the reforestation of 20% of private properties are undoubtedly lofty goals that are met with great challenges, and many lessons may be taken away from the work of the PBP. Principally, I found that the greatest challenge to the project was the level of community participation. Given that I worked principally on a research project separate from the implemented agroecological models and that I was not present for the number of community meetings held among the small producers, I was not able to gain a true understanding of this level of community involvement. Nevertheless, in talking with several landowners and observing the different agencies over the course of the summer, I found the lack of community-based initiatives to be the fundamental challenge to this top-down approach for sustainable land-use change.
At least as an individual looking at the project from the outside, it was apparent that many producers joined the project because they felt they had to comply with the 20% Legal Reserve law and not because they were actually interested in the restoration of the native vegetation. Only a few producers stand out in my mind as those who truly believed in the PBP’s cause. This lack of community-based initiative – where the producers themselves recognize a problem and seek viable solutions – raises the concern that these agroecological models may not be sustained over time or that the project will only develop to the point that the government pushes it. In order to realize truly sustainable land-use change, action has to come from the producers themselves.
The Paraná Biodiversity Project is undoubtedly a top-down approach to land restoration, funded by the World Bank and organized principally at the state-level; thus fundamentally, community-based action is a challenge. However, the decentralized nature of the Paraná Biodiversity Project, with the involvement of many, on-the-ground, local agencies, does provide hope for greater local participation. A greater level of community leadership, organizing and education may certainly motivate more long-lasting effects of the Paraná Biodiversity Project.
Well, there is plenty more to discuss, but I think that about sums up what immediately jumps into my head when I think about my experience here in Paraná. Thanks so much for reading. It has been a pleasure filling you in on my experiences in the south of Brazil, and I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to comment and discuss as much as you like.
Até a próxima vez. Tchau!
Posted by Megan Whelan at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2009
The Internship Winds Down
Fifty plots, one hundred soil samples, and more than a thousand plant specimens, collected and pressed to a crisp, characterize the past five weeks of my internship here in Paraná, Brazil. It has been a busy month!!
Like I said in my last post, the objective of the research with the Paraná Biodiversity Project has been to compare native vegetation regeneration under three treatment types: areas planted with native trees, areas planted with eucalyptus, and areas that were simply fenced off and isolated. The results will hopefully indicate a preference for the restoration of natural vegetation in the region. In this post, I hope to provide a clear picture of the research methodology that was used this summer.
In total, 50 plots from about 30 different private properties in the municipality of Diamante do Norte were examined: 12 isolated; 20 planted with eucalyptus; 10 planted with natives; 8 planted with both natives and exotics. The plots range in age and distance from the nearby rivers (all are located within 250m of any river). Within a given treatment and distance from river, the specific locations of the plots were determined randomly by the roll of a die.
Six types of data were collected in each 5m x 50m plot. First, we recorded the diameter at breast-height (DBH) for every woody species with a DBH greater or equal to one centimeter found within the site. Second, we recorded the occurrence of every plant species found within the plot, collecting a sample specimen for any unknown or new species. Next, along a 50m transect tape that ran down the middle of the plot, we recorded which species were crossing the line for every ten centimeters. For every ten meters, we measured the depth of the O-Horizon of the soil. We then collected a sample from the O-Horizon and from the first 10cm of the A-Horizon at each of these 10m distances to be analyzed for pH and nutrient content. Finally, we determined the color of the A-Horizon using a soil-color chart book, and we considered the plot completed once the coordinates of the site were recorded.
Now, I’ve been using the pronoun “we,” demanding a description of the three incredibly important people who accompanied me in the field. First, there was my neighbor in the State Park of Caiuá, António Terto. He works directly for the state’s environmental agency (IAP) as the equivalent of a US’ forest park ranger. He provided transportation to the different properties and facilitated the research process, always encouraging the most efficient methodology possible in order to fit in as many plots as we could during the short time we had in the field. Next there was Seu João, who works with the organization COMAFEM. COMAFEM is an inter-municipality body that provides environmental technicians and support for a number of different projects and programs. As the individual who held the most experience working with forestry in Diamante do Norte and who could handle a machete with incredible ease, Seu João helped to both tame some of the most grizzly of plots (and by grizzly, I mean too dense or too spiny to pass) and to provide the common names of scores of plants, labeling anything from indistinct ground-cover to common trees. Finally, there was Valdir Leite da Silva. Valdir, who also works with COMAFEM, held the most experience working with other visiting researchers in the area. Consulting often with this native-born, Diamante do Norte resident, I depended greatly on Valdir’s local knowledge and his scientific-minded advice.
And so, accompanied by these three, Paraná Biodiversity Project collaborators, I finished up a busy, month-and-a-half of field research, and have since returned to the Botanical Garden of Curitiba to identify (to the scientific name) all of the plant specimens that were collected and pressed from the field. The herbarium in the Botanical Garden of Curitiba possesses the largest number of plant families and genera in Brazil, and the botanists there, principally Juarez Cordeiro, utilized this incredible resource to assist me in identifying the hundreds of samples that I brought back from the northwestern region of the state.
Of course, the identification process will never be fully complete. Many of the plants did not have flowers or seeds to properly distinguish them to the individual species level, yet the internship has to end at some point! Thus, this week is the last official week of the internship, and these days mostly consist of tying up loose ends and enjoying Brazil before leaving for the States. Juarez Cordeiro at the Botanical Garden has agreed to continue identifying plants until neither time nor material will allow for more identification, the list that he provides will contribute greatly to the quality of the data analysis that I will begin upon returning to Brown.
I think that is all for now!! I will post another blog tomorrow, reflecting on my experience with the Paraná Biodiversity Project. Thanks again for reading. Abraços e até mais!!
Posted by Megan Whelan at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2009
I've been in Brazil for over a month?!
Hello! Welcome to my first blog entry of the summer! I cannot believe that more than a month has already gone by since I first arrived in Brazil. Needless to say, I have plenty to write about!
I guess I will start with a short description of my internship to give you all some context for the 5-week summary to follow. The Paraná Biodiversity Project was developed by a number of state agencies in Paraná, Brazil to create biodiversity corridors that link conservation units throughout the state. The decentralized nature of the project allows for the implementation of community-based, income-generating, agroecological models that benefit small land-owners while restoring native vegetation to degraded lands. During the spring, I was invited by Gracie Abad Maximiano, a 2007 Watson Institute Scholar of the Environment to intern with her and the Paraná Biodiversity Project to evaluate some of the impacts of the project’s eucalyptus agroecological model.
The internship started off in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Upon arriving in the city’s airport, one receives a smattering of images of the city’s biggest tourist attraction: the Botanical Garden. Incredibly, that is where I lived for the 10 days I spent in the city because my internship provided me with researcher status! During that time, I accompanied Gracie to meet a number of the different state-level government agencies affiliated with the Paraná Biodiversity Project. I visited the Secretary of State Planning (SEPL), the Environmental Institute of Paraná (IAP), and The Paraná Agency for Technical Assistance and Rural Expanse (EMATER). I spent the most time, of course, with Gracie and the State Secretary of the Environment and Water Resources (SEMA). The Paraná Biodiversity Project requires the coordination of each of these institutes and all of their regional bodies in order to achieve the restoration of native vegetation in the state in a manner that is also beneficial and feasible for those producers involved. During my second week in Curitibá, Gracie charged me with the task of presenting my internship and our proposed research plan to representatives of each of those agencies… luckily for me (and my language skills) the presentation was a much more informal discussion about who I am, and where I fit in the Paraná Biodiversity Project.
At 10pm on June 22, I found myself on the second story of a double decker bus departing from Curitiba for Paranavaí and the northwestern part of the state. Gracie had remained down below where the seats recline to be completely horizontal. The next morning and the following week we were off visiting the regional offices of those same institutions to see how they work on the ground.
Picture large expanses of pasturelands, sugar cane fields, cassava root fields, and red, sandy dirt roads – as well as the occasional small fragment of incredibly diverse native forest. Now you have a pretty good image of the northwest of Paraná. About 6-8 years ago, the state government pressured all landowners to fence off 30 meters of their properties at the margin of any river, so now-a-days there is also meandering strips of green that run throughout the landscape. During that same period, the government also began to enforce a Federal law passed in 1964 that stated that all properties must dedicate at least 20% of their land as a legal reserve (in the Amazonian region this fraction increases to 80% of any property). Of course, the loss of productive land to be converted into a reserve requires a huge sacrifice by any producer, and it is the goal of the agroecological models to create economic opportunities so that producers may still benefit from the ecological restoration of their properties.
Many landowners have begun to cultivate eucalyptus within their legal reserves as a form of income generation while still complying with the federal law. Eucalyptus, despite being an exotic species, has been recognized to create a favorable microclimate for the regeneration of native species. And it is at this point where my work with the Paraná Biodiversity Project really begins.
For the past two weeks and for the next three weeks to come, I will be carrying out field research to compare native regeneration under three scenarios: areas planted with natives, areas planted with eucalyptus, and areas that were simply left isolated. Under the supervision of Gracie here in Brazil and the academic advising of Dov Sax back at Brown, I hope to gain results that will inform the implementation of this agroecological model in the future.
Well anyway, I think this blog post has gone on long enough! In future blog posts, look forward to learning more about my research process and some of my opinions about the Paraná Biodiversity Project’s approach to sustainable production!
Alright Tchau for now… thanks for reading… and abraços!! Até Mais!
Posted by Megan Whelan at 11:06 AM | Comments (2)
