Learning Time- Week 5. Studying Rainforest Ecology in Malaysia

I have come to realize that there is a limit to what I can expect to teach in a one credit course. Thus, I have had to modify my expectations for the course a little bit. The students here are taking a much larger course load than thy are at home; students at UM earn their degrees in 3 to 3 1/2 years compared with 4 to 5 1/2 back home. Thus, I think that it would be much more useful if I could provide my students with a different perspective rather than trying to fill their heads with more knowledge.

Some Background- UM

UM is ranked as the 180th best university in the world according to the 2010 Times Higher Education rankings (UM is tied with Texas A&M). UM's goal is to become ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. Gauth Jason, the Vice Chancellor (equivalent of President) of UM, is pushing for a change in research culture at UM which will result in professors publishing in journals with higher "impact factors". UM profs publishing in Science or Nature will receive a 25,000 ringgit (about $8000) bonus. To read more about the Vice-Chancellor's plans for increasing the status of UM check out his website http://vcoffice.um.edu.my/. It is interesting to examine the similarities and differences between UM's plan for improvement with the plan proposed by Texas Tech University President Guy Baily http://www.ttu.edu/administration/president/tier1/.

Publishing in these top tier journals is not easy, so I thought that it would be useful to look at they type of research on tropical rainforests that gets published in Science and Nature to give the students some idea of the type of work they will need to be doing to be competitive in the new environment.

Some Background- History of Ecology
The modern science of ecology evolved from the descriptive study of natural history. In the 1960s Joe Connell (one of my professors at UCSB and the person most responsible for getting me excited about becoming and ecologist)showed ecologists the value of well-replicated, controlled manipulative experiments in the field. Through the 1960s and 70s ecologists learned that many of the ecological interactions that we are interested in understanding are quite complex and take a long time to reach a conclusion. Thus, scientists realized the value of having teams of scientists working together over long time periods.

LTER

The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program arose out of the need to foster long term ecological research. Prior to the establishment of the LTER program by the US National Science Foundation, most research grants in ecology lasted only 2 - 3 years making it hard to confidently conduct experiments that required a longer time frame. The LTER program funded groups of scientists working at particular sites and guaranteed funding for longer periods of time. There are currently over 20 LTER sites in the US many of which have been continuously funded since 1980. The value of the LTER approach has been recognized by scientists around the world, so there is now an Interanational Longe Term Ecological Research network with over 40 member nations (Malaysia is not currently a member of ILTER Network).

Long Term Ecological Research in Tropical Rainforests

Because tropical rainforests are so diverse and are dominated by long-lived trees, tropical rainforests require a long term approach. One of the best known examples of long term research on tropical rainforests comes from the "50 hectare plot" at the Smiithsonian Tropical Research Institute' (STRI) field site on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Lake Gatung in the Panama Canal. In the early 80s Robin Foster and Steve Hubbell established a 50 hectare plot on BCI where they mapped every tree, shrub, or sapling that had a diameter of greater than 1 cm at breast height (over 240,000 plants of 303 species). They have recensused this plot every 5 years since then. The data from this plot have led to many new insights into factors that determine plant community structure in tropical rainforests and have been the focus of many high profile publications.

The long term approach to studying rainforest ecosystems that has been so effective at BCI has now been applied to a number of rainforest systems around the world including three in Malaysia- Danum Valley in Sabah, Lambir in Sarawak, and Pasoh in penninsular Malaysia.

To Learn more you can follow along on my teaching blog http://umspecialtopics.blogspot.com/ or look at the presentation on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/secret/tEQNn6QW5qqDsF.

The first homework assignment is due this week, so if you are playing along at home make sure you get your papers to me by noon on Wednesday, Malaysia time!!