EGYPT TRAINING COURSES AND RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROJECTS

Unlike most of the other sites, the training courses and Research Assistant projects in Egypt are combined into two separate options consisting of either 3 weeks in the Sinai desert and 1 week on the marine side, or 2 weeks spent in the White Desert. The first of these options attracts 20 credits from the University of Nottingham, which can be translated into credits for participants from other universities outside the UK (please email nottinghamcredits@opwall.com for details of how the credits could apply in your university).

Research Assistant Projects including Training

ES101 St Katherine biodiversity atlas project (Expedition 5) 

The expedition starts after Sunday lunch with short lectures on an introduction to the Sinai followed by field safety and medical talks. Over the next 3 days there will be a series of lectures on arid region ecology and practicals aimed at training the participants in the identification skills needed and the survey techniques that will be used. On the Thursday the group will be starting on one of the three 9 day trek routes that have been designed to cover as many as possible of the 10km x 10m squares that still need survey effort. The trek routes will take the group from St Katherine to the Gulf of Aqaba or the Gulf of Suez and it is an amazing opportunity to see some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in Egypt. The groups will be living in temporary Bedouin camps around oases and will be surveying in small teams for plants from quadrat surveys, reptiles from standard search times, transect surveys for birds, assessing mammal usage from spoor and scat and mist netting for bats and using bat detectors on mobile night time surveys.
At the end of 9 days in the desert the teams will return to the Fox Camp for a rest and to help with data entry and mapping the results. On Sunday the group will be split into those doing different training course options. One option is to do a DNA extraction course using samples collected during the survey (ES002). Volunteers on this course will be trained in the techniques of extracting and purifying the DNA, amplifying it with specific primers using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and then visualising the results using electrophoresis. A second option is to do a wildlife illustration course (ES003) taught by one of the leading Egyptian wildlife illustrators. A third option is to do a course on how to display biodiversity data spatially using Arc and Erdisi software (ES004). This course also gives an introduction into then using environmental data (rainfall, altitude, temperature, soil types, habitat etc) to predict distribution of species using GIS techniques.

In the final week the group move to the NSF Marine Training Center in Dahab where they will spend a week learning to dive (ED005), or, if already qualified or not wishing to dive, will complete a reef ecology course (ED006). The dive course will train students up to PADI Open Water level. This is the internationally recognised entry level qualification for SCUBA diving, and the course consists of theory work, confined water training (conducted just off shore in the shallows) and at least 4 Open Water dives. The reef ecology course (for those already dive trained or those who would prefer to snorkel) consists of daily lectures and in-water practicals (diving or snorkelling). The course is designed to give a comprehensive introduction to the marine ecology of this part of the world - training participants in identification of corals, fish, and invertebrates.
EW102 Western Desert Oasis Survey (expedition 6)

This 2-week expedition involves a small team working with specialist biologists visiting a series of remote oases in the Western Desert. This remote area of desert bounded by the Nile to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west has had little biological survey work completed to date. Yet large parts of this wilderness are due to be converted to agriculture using the large reservoirs of untapped groundwater lying just beneath the desert. Biodiversity surveys are needed and this Operation Wallacea expedition is designed to provide some data to supplement that gathered during the first expedition here in 2010, which aimed to develop a rapid assessment survey technique that would be applied across large parts of the desert in future years.

The teams will be staying in Bedouin camps next to large lakes at Baharia and Farafa and will be using 4x4 vehicles to access remote oases. At each oasis, seine netting will be completed to assess fish and amphibian communities, standardised search times used to assess reptile communities, sweep netting surveys done for butterflies and dragonflies and quadrat surveys to assess the plant communities. Many miles of inhospitable desert isolate many of these oases and it is possible that new species will be discovered in these surveys. In addition bird surveys will be completed at each oasis both to determine the community structure but also because the surveys are being done at migration time to identify their importance as staging posts for trans-Sahara migrants. During these surveys there will be time for the group to visit the spectacular scenery of the White Desert.