ML138431
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Joseph Wright. Timecode In: 00:00:04. Timecode out: 01:52:00. Notes: Biodiversity; Canopy science. Habitat: Dry Forest. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Decoded MS stereo; Sennheiser MKH40 Cardioid Mid Mic and MKH30 Bidirectional Side Mic. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS "Life on the Brink" Panama Crane #1 March 20, 1995 Interview with Joe Wright, research biologist with STRI and Kawow Iwagina (??? Kaoru Kitajima?), post-doc working with Wright 00:52 JW: Parque Natural Metropolitano, beside Panama City in the old canal area, land that reverted to Panama in 1979 and became a park in 1985. The forest here is a tropical dry forest, we get 1700 millimeters of rain a year, which is quite low by tropical force standards, and there is five month period during which it is very dry. In fact you can have no rain fall, as we did in 1992 during an El Nino event. Right now it's the late dry season, with perhaps a month to go. Its been dry for about four months at this point. The forest is partially deciduous the canopy is much more open than it will be in the wet season. Actually the time of greatest canopy closure, and greatest leaf area in the forest is December January. The first two months of the dry season. It's a problem -a paradox that we are working with. A question whether these plants are water limited or light limited. The dry season is time of much greater radiation b/c clouds absorb the wave lengths that are photosynthetically active. so we believe that the forest has adapted to put out a many ¬many of the plants are put out new leaves, and increase leaf area right at the beginning of the dry period to take advantage of the higher incoming radiation that's available when the cloud cover breaks up. 2:29 4:47-4:50 FX: crane moving up into the canopy 5:06 AC: we are in a small little cage with open sides. there is a little fence that comes up -not very high at all -and then there is a roof on it, and we are suspended by a cable that runs down to the roof i guess it's maybe 41/2 square -the floor? JW: 1.2 meters by 1.2 meters -and we dignify it by calling it a gondola, not a cage. [laughter] ac: So what do you see up here? why do you like being up here? 5:48 JW: well, this system, this crane system represents a real break-through in our ability to study the forest canopy. The traditional methods of getting access to the canopy are to climb ropes, and perhaps to build a platform in the canopy of a tree or to suspend a walk way between trees. But all of those methods depend on the tree to support the biologist weight. And any school child can tell you that trees don't put their leaves, their flowers, their fruits on the load bearing limbs, rather all of the organs of interest -except the wood itself -are out at the tips of small twigs and the smallest branches. They are up in the sun. 6:35 AC: Now when you say the items of interest what do you mean? JW: Well the organ for carbon gain in plants is the leaf, and all of the reproductive organs, the entire reproductive biology of the plant is the flowers and the fruits. and those organs are all distal, they are at the tips of twigs and the smallest branches. there are a few plants that have their flowers, cauliferous [flowers which mature develop, etc. on the trunk of the tree] flowers, on the main trunk or on the main trunk, but the vast have their flowers at the tip of the growing maristem. so if you have gotten into your tree on a rope, or if you are sitting on a platform that is nailed into a tree, or attached to the tree you are sitting back on the load bearing limb and what you want to study you can't get to it. you are closer to it, but you can't reach it. and with this gondola system and with the tower crane -the tower crane is much taller than the forest. where you are raised up above the forest taken to where ever you want to drop ... (Notes truncated)
Technical information
- Recorder
- SONY TCD-D7
- Microphone
- Sennheiser MKH 30; Sennheiser MKH 40
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 27 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 27 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 27 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman