In February, I spent my second field season in the Tierras Collectives Emberá, where we have our permanent plot: Bacurú Drõa. The project started in 2021 by the internationally recognized climate scientist Catherine Potvin, now emeritus professor at McGill university. I joined the scientific leadership of the project in 2023 with the tropical biologist Dr. Daisy Dent (ETH Zurich), the social scientist Joseph Levitan (McGill University) and Javier Mateo-Vega(Assistant Under Secretary for Research Programs & Partnerships, Smithsonian Institution).

This time, I went with the phyllosphere microbiome expert Dr. Geneviève Lajoie (INRS, Québec). We were gathering leaf samples for our microbiome project and gathering functional traits of several species in the 15 hectare plot. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Catherine Potvin.

We are hoping to obtain funding for our research on the relationship between forest productivity, drought and functional traits and implicate students. We thank the Emberá community of Manené for their warm welcome and the field assistants (they really know the plants and the forest!).

Tune in  and enjoy the nice photos, the place is just fantastic !

JCVA 14.03.2025