2007/2008 New plots from Brazil
Juliana Stropp Carneiro carried out fieldwork for her PhD thesis in the upper Rio Negro area. Her work focusses on community ecology of white sand forests of the Rio Negro area. Eight new plots were established in the vicinity of Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira and along the Icana river. Juliana also carried out ecological experiments during two field trips to the area.
2007 A Rapid Biological Assessment of the Lely and Nassau Plateaus, Suriname (with additional information on the Brownsberg Plateau) RAP 43
The Lely and Nassau Plateaus are located in north-eastern Suriname and range in elevation from 500-700 m. They are covered mostly by high dryland rainforest on the plateaus and slopes and mountain savannah forest on the plateau. The Brownsberg Plateau is a third major plateau in this area, part of which is protected by the Brownsberg Nature Park (11,800 ha).
The 2002 Guayana Shield Priority-Setting Workshop determined that these three plateaus are all important for biodiversity but that we lack essential biodiversity data, particularly for Lely and Nassau (Huber and Foster 2003). The plateaus provide many watershed services for local and coastal communities, as well as important sources of employment (principally small-scale gold mining), food, medicine and building materials for local communities. Lely and Nassau are still relatively intact owing to low human population density, which presents many unique opportunities for conservation over a relatively large landscape area. However, they all face a number of current and potential threats, including logging, hunting/poaching and small-scale (gold) and large-scale (bauxite and gold) mining.
ATDN members contributed 1 chapter on the tree inventory plots of Nassau, Brownsberg NP and Lely Mts.