
They have more than 200 researchers, including doctors, students, technicians, administrators, and so forth. They work from Manaus westward along the Rio Solimoes to a major Petrobras oil extraction site on the Rio Urucu, a Solimoes tributary. Petrobras is exploring for oil about 200km to the west, which would expand Piatam's area of research; they are also contemplating building an oil pipeline through this area of the Amazon, which would similarly expand Piatam's area of interest. Downstream from Manaus, they are involved with the area all the way to the ocean, where Petrobras has offshore oil platforms. Various other areas are also exploited by Petrobras; Piatam is involved in all of those areas. So Piatam's operations are closely tied to those of Petrobras.
Piatam's work is subdivided into economics and management, modeling of the environment, social economics and ethics, archaeology, history, the environmental/physical study of soils, geology, and hydrodynamics, fish ecology, aquatic macrophytes, fish larvae, environmental toxicology, entomology, ethnobotany, mammals, tropical diseases (particularly malaria), information technology, communication with the public, and, of course, management. The data they collect is not currently public; there are issues surrounding the fact that the data was sometimes gathered by affiliates, not by Piatam itself, and some researchers don't want the data to be public because they want to reap the benefits of their work in their own published papers, and the geological data, for example, has proprietary importance for Petrobras, and there are patent issues surrounding some ethnobotany data, and so on. But the management of Piatam would like to make the data public; Alex says that it is recognized that they can't possibly do justice to the data they have gathered otherwise.
They started with just one small boat and twelve researchers; they now have two large boats that can carry 55 people at a time. They gather data four times a year, to assess seasonal changes, and visit nine communities that they work with along the Solimoes. Individual groups, such as the malaria team, go out more frequently to gather data that can't be done on those four main trips. The showed us a picture of a researcher who acts as "human bait" to attract mosquitoes for collection; that man has gotten malaria four or five times now, and is happy when he gets bitten five or six hundred times per hour. Some of Piatam's work will be featured in National Geographic in August 2008 in a four-page article.
Now we're getting some more detailed talks on research projects at Piatam. I won't take notes on them in detail, just list the topics: 1) Classification of high-resolution images from the IKONOS satellite for the area of the Nossa Senhora de Nazare community, 2) Fish ecology in floodplain lakes on the Solimoes, 3) Hydrodynamic modeling, 4) Use of a graph model for resolution of conflicts and disputes among Amazonian fishermen.
We're

Now we are at INPA hearing talks from some researchers here. We wandered around INPA a little first, and had lunch there; I got some pretty good photos of some semi-wild

Now

The next presentation is on the Biotupé project, which surveys the biological, social and cultural diversity of Tupé's RDS (Reserve of Sustainable Development). This is a project we will be visiting next week and camping at overnight. An RDS is a protected area associated with the sustainable use of its resources, by its local communities, in order to preserve biodiversity. The Tupé RDS is about 30km up the Rio Negro from Manaus, and is almost as big as Manaus itself (approx. 12,000 hectares), with six rural communities inside it of about fifty families each. There is a lake, Tupé Lake, in the reserve, with white sand beaches (at low water) and black water like the Rio Negro (i.e. tannic and acidic, with low nutrient content). It's a very beautiful spot, and a popular tourist destination; its designation as an RDS is, among other thing, motivated by a desire to preserve the area against the onslaught of tourists. The Biotupé project is affiliated with several other local agencies, universities, and institutions, and has members including social scientists, journalists, and architects, not only biologists. They look at vegetation, hydrochemistry, hydrology, zooplankton, phytoplankton, aquatic insects, benthic fauna, fishes, use of natural resources, sponges, fungi, education, sediments, income promotion, local community organization, and education of youth in science. These programs all seem to have remarkably broad goals! Their website is http://biotupe.inpa.gov.br, but I don't know if any of it is in English.
Now we are going to have a couple of student presentations, which I'll post separately as usual.
1 comment:
I don't read this blog yet. I've been working a lot and don't want to read Not-too-fun-thing-for keewi stuff.
I will read as soon as I have time and mental capacity for lectures and stuffs...:)
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