Hi all! A year ago I did an interview with someone from my university, but because I wasn't running my blog then I never managed to share it. After all this time I'd like to share it with my readers! Here is my interview with Reuben, a Student Experience intern at the University of Manchester. I hope you'll enjoy learning more about what I do! What is the research topic? Dael Sassoon is a second-year Geography PhD student. His research focuses on the ecosystem dynamics of Amazonian open peatlands. In 2000, a peatland complex was identified in the Pastaza-Marañón Foreland Basin in Peru – to date the largest known of in the Amazon. This environment contains three main forest classifications: palm swamps, pole forests and open peatlands. Palm swamps and pole forests have been studied more extensively, while open peatlands dynamics are less understood. This research looks to investigate open peatlands in more depth. It seeks to understand how they form, and how vegetation in this environment succeeds from one peatland type to another, and what drives change within the peatlands. What was the motivation for undertaking this research? During his undergrad and masters, Dael conducted pollen analyses in England and Wales, working with the The Woodland Trust. The summer after he graduated, he took part in a project in Peru with Operation Wallacea. They are an organisation that take students to the Amazon to conduct plant and animal surveys for periods between two weeks and two months. Dael went there for two weeks and following this experience, decided he was keen to conduct research involving pollen analysis in the Amazon. Even though there were no PhD projects at UoM available on this topic, Dael came up with a proposal with the help of his supervisory team at UoM and academics from St Andrews, and was accepted onto a PhD. He works with academics from Leeds, St Andrews and Edinburgh – a big inter-institutional research group called the Tropical Wetlands Consortium. What has he done for this research? The first year of his PhD focussed on planning his work in more depth, and submitting funding applications to support his work. His fieldwork required additional equipment, fieldwork assistants, and a boat, in addition to the cost of getting to the Amazon. At the end of his first year, in May 2019, Dael was finally able to embark on his fieldwork and collect the samples that would form the basis of his study. His main research site was the village of Veinte De Enero, in north eastern Peru, where he stayed for almost a month. Behind the village there is a palm swamp, which contains within it a large open peatland, the focus of Dael’s research. Dael and his research team obtained cores from the open peatland and set up numerous pollen traps in the area. They also conducted vegetation surveys to better understand the composition of the vegetation at present, to help better interpret how it has changed in the past. They also took cores from the adjacent palm swamps to see if there were any parallels between the different peatland sites. Since returning to the UK, Dael has been preparing and processing his samples. He has one 3m core from open peatland and 1.5m core from the palm swamp in Veinte De Enero. After Dael had returned home, members of his research team went to another site called San Roque, and got another 6m open peatland core. To conduct pollen analyses, Dael had to familiarise with new pollen: what it looks like, how much of it there is, and its different proportions. This required a lot of training. He has been analysed his cores on Itrax XRF machine to understand the geochemical changes that have taken place over time. These are useful to understand the different inputs into the system. Has there been any human impact on the development of this system? Global sea level has changed in the last 15ka, and river dynamics have changed in response to this, in turn affecting peatlands. There are two main types of river in Amazon: white water rivers from Andes and black water rivers from the lowlands, which contain organic detritus from trees. The blackwater rivers move slowly in the lowlands. Water stagnates, soil becomes waterlogged and deposition occurs, forming peatlands. These archives record environmental change that has taken place over this time. In October, Dael sent a radiocarbon application to Natural Environment Research Council. Radiocarbon dating is necessary to constrain the chronology of samples. Based on previous studies in the area, it is likely the oldest dates are around 7ka. Most dates are Late Holocene age, around 2-3ka. What does he hope this research will achieve? Dael aims to contribute to a greater understanding of how these ecosystems and peatlands form. Currently we don’t know how they form or why there are different types of peatlands: is it a succession from peatland to palm swamps to pole forest or is it the other way around? Dael hopes to see how the environment has reacted to climate changes, and wants to learn about whether people have affected these systems. He hopes that this research will help predict how open peatlands changes will change in the future. This is especially important because peatlands in the Amazon contain high quantities of carbon. He hopes to be able to suggest how peatlands will react to changes in erosion rates or other factors and therefore how much carbon could be released into the atmosphere. Ultimately, this work will feed into wider research to show how peatlands respond to change and how we can protect them. Veinte De Enero is protected as a reserve, but in the surrounding area there is a lot of peatland draining, palm plantations and gold mines, which make the location particularly sensitive and vulnerable. Thanks for reading!
Stay tuned and stay wanderlust, Dael
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