Welcome Two New Interns to the EBL Crew!

The EBL crew is excited to introduce our two new interns!
1) Natalie Myers:
She just graduated from Occidental College with a BA in Biology with a concentration on Environmental Science. She is originally from near Seattle, Washington and in her free time she likes to draw, hike and read. She loves animals, and in the past has studied a variety of things, but hopes to study evolutionary biology and herpetology in the future! She is excited to get to explore Guam and the Mariana Islands, and to learn more about plant communities.

2) Erin Fitz:
She recently graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Natural Resource Conservation. She is interested in landscape ecology and understanding the role humans play within the ecosystem. She is looking forward to gaining a greater understanding of tropical ecology on the islands. Erin continuously seeks new ways to explore the world around her- namely through travel, hiking, rock climbing, drawing, and painting.

Team Flame Trees: Tricia Magallano

Delayed post: 28 May 2018

The first week of the Tropical Forest Island Ecology Course has passed. Pictured above are the course participants from the Northern Marianas College, Saipan arriving to OceanView Hotel in Tumon, Guam. 

Team Vines: Atanacio Naputi

My name is Atanacio Naputi and my amazing and hardworking team Bruno, Marie, and Eugene are doing a project on vine abundance and diversity. 

These are pictures of us out in the field collecting data.

Team Vines: Bruno Cases

My name is Bruno from Guam. We identified vines and trees found within the transect of 50 ft long with 6 ft on each side.

Here, my groupmates are trying to identify a tree that is a bit unfamiliar to us found in the transect.  Surprisingly, they identified it so fast. As a result, we are all happy! 

Team Vines: Marie Auyong

Delayed post: 25 May 2018

Håfa adai! My name is Marie and my group is interested in vines in karst forests in Saipan and Guam. For our research, we’re collecting data about vine species and their abundance. We are also looking at how vines cover trees in the forests and how coverage might affect overall tree health.

Today is the second day we’ve visited our first sample site, Marpi. We also visited our second sample site, Laderan Tanke. I really appreciate the sharp observational skills of my teammates Bruno, Eugene, and Nacio, because they found this:

As someone from Guam, a (mostly) birdless island, it was a pleasant surprise.

Do you know what kind of bird builds this nest? I’d love to be able to share with students on Guam! We have four public elementary schools that have a bird as their mascot.

Team Snails: Valentino Orhaitil

The snail group in Hila'an.

Natural resource managers and some students across the Micronesia region were invited to attend a 2 and a half week course on Forest Ecology in Guam and Saipan conducted by University of Guam and Iowa State University. The purpose of the Course was to provide training for some of the natural resources people around Micronesian region. The course is part of USFS (Forest Service), tailored for the forestry professional work. There were 15 total participants from across Micronesia. 

The course consisted of 17-days in session, where students were learning different approaches in recognizing and recalling the major impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems. The course consisted of research and management of pacific island forests in a changing climate. This course will be extremely helpful for the natural resource managers in the whole Micronesia region. While the Course tailored to forestry program efforts, the information will be applicable to most, if not all, novices to forestry service program. The facilitators presented the information through slides, and had groups work together to review questions to give us practice, test understanding and practice hands-on data analysis.