Guyana - School Expeditions

Structure of the expedition

The Guyana research project is run in the heart of the vast Guiana Shield forests that make up northern South America. The project is run in the Iwokrama Forest that represents 371,000 ha of tropical rainforest in central Guyana. This two week expedition gives students the opportunity to see much of the exciting wildlife of the Guiana Shield and to help with data collection for a biodiversity assessment. This expedition is the most physically tough of the expeditions and is not for the faint hearted.  Students spend their first week at the Iwokrama research centre on the banks of the mighty Essequibo River, and their second week navigating the smaller Burro-Burro River conducting wildlife surveys. Students contribute in the following ways to the research objectives:

·    To ascertain population density of large mammals, birds, bats, reptiles and amphibians to enable better understanding of forest community dynamics, and their responses to climate change and human impacts

·    Collect data on carbon storage which contributes to the Reducing  Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme

In the first week, the volunteers will learn jungle survival skills, which will include how to live in field camps in hammocks, navigation and trekking skills as well as the main dangers from animals and diseases in the forests and rivers and how to reduce those risks. They will also have two days of lectures and associated practicals to learn about Guiana Shield forest ecology and how to identify some of the more common species.  The remaining two days of this first week will be spent helping the science teams with forest structure, bird, amphibian, reptile and large mammal surveys.

In the second week, the team will be travelling in boats down the Burro-Burro River through the heart of the Iwokrama rainforest, to the village of Surama in the savannahs to the south of Iwokrama.  This is a deep forest experience and the teams will be camping out on the river bank in hammocks and helping the boat drivers and guides porter the boats around rapids and to navigate around fallen trees.  The purpose of this trip is to gather standardised data on the water birds and large mammals encountered as well as various indicators of human disturbance. 

Forest week

During their week at the Iwokrama Research centre, the students will complete 12 half days of activities as follows:

·    introduction to the Guiana Shield forests (1 session)

·    jungle skills training (3 sessions)

·    forest carbon and habitat surveys (4 sessions) – After one session of training, the students will be working in teams each completing measurements of 20m x 20m quadrats to collect data on the diameter at breast height of all woody species, canopy height, quantity of vegetation at different heights from a touch pole, light penetration to forest floor using a canopy scope, evidence of disturbance (e.g. cut stumps) and sapling density

·     learning about biodiversity monitoring techniques and helping with field surveys (4 sessions).  This consists of a lecture course on Guiana Shield Forest Ecology comprising lectures on forest structure and diversity (nutrient cycling, definitions of rainforest, biodiversity hotspots, endemism in the Guiana Shield), adaptations and co-evolution (leaf cutter ants and fungus gardens), amphibians and reptiles (snakes, caiman, treefrogs), Neotopical birds (lekking species, antbirds, hole nesting species), Neotropical mammals (primate social structure, jaguars and pumas) and sustainability (threats to Guyana’s forests, REDD+ scheme).  The practical sessions include:

o    Mist net sampling for birds. Students will learn how to identify birds in the hand and take morphometric measurements

o    Scan search sampling for herpetofauna from forest transects and scan searching water bodies for amphibians

o    Large mammal transect surveys. When a mammal is detected, the species, number of individuals, distance travelled along the transect and perpendicular distance of the mammal to the observer will be recorded.

o    Mist netting for bats

o    Spotlight surveys for amphibians and reptiles to assess frog communities and opportunistically sighted reptiles.  Species encountered will be identified and the main identification features explained.

Burro-Burro week

During the Burro-Burro week, the students will be:

·        Conducting standardised surveys of water birds

·        Conducting surveys of giant otter status and distribution

The main research objective of these surveys is to complete annual monitoring of key wildlife indicators of the health of the river.  The teams will sleep at different river camps on the banks of the river each night, and will slowly navigate the river in the daytime, searching for wildlife. Records of target bird and mammal species will be noted by the students, providing the yearly monitoring data.

Example research questions for IB, EPQ or CoPE

Can reduced-impact logging be used as a tool for biodiversity conservation in tropical forests?

Describe the effect of selective logging on wildlife communities in Guiana Shield forests.

Describe the role of bats and birds in forest regeneration and maintaining forest biodiversity.

What is the role of large mammals in forest regeneration and maintaining forest biodiversity?

How can standardised wildlife surveys be used to effectively monitor changes in forest community dynamics?