COOL ENGINEERING

Alice and I spent a good moment puzzling over how to make the elbow and T joints made available to us into a stable three point join yesterday… We considered cable ties, rope and tape- until Bruce stepped in and recommended adding 10cm long lengths of pipe in between the joins.

It is now a sleek beast. We are more excited to build the rest of the set than we were before. For the record, that’s a lot of excitement.

The Net:

Prototype 1

Our first net was a little too taut over the frame and so must be lengthened to provide just a minute bit more depth (Alice sussed that the fixed width is a limitation). Potential solutions also lie in placing a small mass in the middle of the trap, particularly as the net is super stretchy.

We will, either way, cut a hole and tie the middle of the net for easy transferral of litterfall into our bags ready for analysis.

Bruce also recommended we glue the T joint to the pipe to ensure a fixed 90 degree angle when we place the traps in the field. Tent pegs will also be used for security.

Fun fact: We’ve found that the litterfall nets match the colour of the fog exclusion nets! (Undoubtedly interesting, don’t play).

Thanks

From the inception of our combined interest in cloud forests to now: a special thanks for people and events.

Mark:
There’s a Snapchat picture somewhere logging my fascination over Mark’s numerous contributions in the aforementioned book. Upon return, I followed up on this, and was sincerely grateful to be welcomed to help on his Arduino FreeStation project, with the initial aim of deploying some Juvik fog gauges back to the field site in Chilan, Taiwan [Figure 3].

Fast-forward to India in December, 2017, Mark was then asked of any potential projects we could build on for our dissertations; the first of a multitude of favours. As is mentioned in every email we’ve sent him since, we incessantly express a huge, special thanks for all his patience, guidance, eloquence and insane timeliness throughout both the process so far and undoubtedly, during the rest of our time in the future under your mentor-ship! If you’re reading, we hope to do you proud and look up to you!

 

Staff in JBT Lab:
Throughout our degrees, and even more so during this project, we have relentlessly picked at Bruce Main’s brains and are forever indebted to his unwavering patience and gentleness. To almost every day we chipped away at your free time, lunch time, home time… thank you with all our hearts and apologies if it ever got frustrating, we wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without you! Asia, you’ve been like a big sister to us! Thanks for all your kindness and cheerfulness, we expect the best from your future!

 

Prof. Choy Huang and the staff of Room 108:
Prior to stupidly lugging my 740 page hard copy of Brujinzeel and Scatena’s Tropical Montane Cloud Forests: Science for Conservation and Management (2017) to Taiwan in preparation for my internship at National Taiwan University under Prof. Choy Huang and his absolutely stellar PhD team last summer, I had absolutely no idea what a cloud forest was. My application had been submitted in the hopes of spending a summer abroad doing field-work and enriching my language skills; of which only the former really benefited. Come time to return to London, all I had retained language-wise was “你的闭包开的” after warning multiple pedestrians during my time in Taipei that their bags were open (thanks, Venessa), but this didn’t bother me as otherwise, the experience was incredibly fulfilling.

Choy, Wan Yu, KT, XC, Ruby, CJ, had you not greeted me so warmly into your team, I wouldn’t be on my way to Peru to conduct research on cloud forests for my dissertation. I feel completely blessed to have met you all and hope to see you all soon!

 

 

Huw Jones, Shane Winser and the team behind the RGS-IBG Fieldwork grant:
Thank you all endlessly for your help. We will endeavor to do our best and make the best use of the grant possible.

 

Who are we?

Location: London, UK
Day 6 of building Arduino FreeStation weather stations

First things first! We’re three geography nerds ready to conquer the cloud forests and learn its secrets. Currently in the summer of the second year of our degree, we’re embarking on this trip as part of our individual final year dissertations.

Why are we called Girls aCloud?! What will we be doing?
I mean, we’ve covered the female bit so… cloud forests are defined as moist tropical forests characterized by persistant low-level cloud, or fog, which rises up the sides of mountains (orographically) due to a difference in pressure.

Forests on the sides of these mountains are in the way of this cloud water and therefore intercept it. As with rain, this cloud water is therefore a source of precipitation, even if its volume is minute in comparison.

Due to climate change, however, the base of this fog is rising in height, thus avoiding the forest and causing climate drying. Particularly in the dry months when the forest is entirely reliant on the stability of this water source, we predict this issue will cause the forced migration, adaptation or death of reliant species; the latter having the greatest impact on producers less able to change at the same rate climate change is having an impact.

Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to measure the changes itself and thus its impacts on local ecology and hydrology; as fog droplets are too small and too dependent on external factors such as wind direction and speed to be accurately quantified!

Thus, to build upon the first of a multitude of undeserved favours, our research opportunity builds upon the collaboration between Prof. Mark Mulligan and Dan Metcalfe of the ACCA, who at Wayqecha Biological Station, have established the world’s first ever cloud-exclusion zone. This controlled sample space simplifies the fog data collection process over a five-year period, accurately simulating a fog-free future instead of estimating its impacts through inaccurate readings.

Further, utilising Prof. Mark Mulligan’s Arduino FreeStation weather stations [Re. second and third blog post], weighing sensors and soil moisture probes in addition to litterfall traps, we will each investigate the impact this reduction in precipitation will have on the leaves (tree productivity and difference in leaf interception capacity), epiphytes (interceptive capacity) and soil moisture/ pH/ depth.

 

Gettin geographical

Our leader (Abbey)

Tour guide (Alice)

Logistics man (Wanxin)