5th gear on all fronts
Month 6. A quarter of the way through this MSCA postdoc, half through my first year. This point marks an important moment in the progress of this project, where every aspect of the project is proceeding in full force, but nothing seems to be nearing completion. It's a time where progress is tangible, but the finish line is still out of sight, which means that I just need to keep going!
There are lots of moving parts currently, each taking equal space in my mind as well as my time. One task that we are slowly making progress in is the database of modern pollen samples for the lowlands of Amazonia, which will build the basis of the pollen-based quantitative models - so a crucial aspect of this project. Figuring out what sites class as Amazonian lowland and what data is available is proving a much longer task than anticipated, and we are revealing the true situation of modern samples in Amazonia and the reason why a project like this has not been attempted yet: there is not that many modern samples available for this region of the world. Still, this is why our work of creating a database is so important, to buuld the foundations that it lays for this kind of research. If anyone reading this and has modern samples from lowlands in Amazonia and is willing to collaborate, please hit me up!
Probably the task that has taken the most of my time this month, has been labwork. We have processed a selection of the surface samples I collected in the field in July, about two or three for each site we visited, and these are now ready for pollen analysis. Some of the white sand forest samples took a lot of insisting and intensive hydrofluoric acid treatments in order to get rid of all the… well… white sand! This part of labwork also completes some of the training we had envisioned for the first months of my postdoc, which involved learning how to handle HF. Now we have a nice selection of samples to analyse, which will in all likelihood take up most of my work this coming month. To be honest, I look forward to sitting every day and count some pollen with a podcast in the background… it’s been a while!
The final task I will address is the documentary. As much as there are still many things to edit, our short documentary is near completio. It will detail the importance of the Amazon and the role that palaeoecology plays in its conservation. It’s final title is, drum roll please… ‘Echoes of the Rainforest’! This refers to the lessons we learn from studying past environments - echoes from past ecosystems that can help us conserve today’s tropical rainforests; but also refers to the teachings and wisdom of local communities and researchers who have for a long time, and repeatedly so, advocated for better protection of the Amazon and its inhabitants. If all goes well, after a few more readjustments to video and audio, and a bit of colour correction here and there, Echoes of the Rainforest will have its premiere in a month. After that it will be made available on YouTube and Vimeo.
