{"id":2665,"date":"2016-04-11T11:58:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T15:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=2665"},"modified":"2016-04-11T14:40:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T18:40:35","slug":"forest-primeval-trekking-through-myanmars-northern-forest-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2016\/04\/forest-primeval-trekking-through-myanmars-northern-forest-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"Forest Primeval: Trekking Through Myanmar’s Northern Forest Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stevenson Swanson<\/a> is the Science Media Manager at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Gatthu<\/a>
Setting out, uphill, from Gatthu village on the first day of the trek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last fall, when the leaves were turning golden yellow and bright red in The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s old-growth forest<\/a>, two Botanical Garden scientists were on the other side of the world, trekking through a very different old-growth forest in northern Myanmar.<\/p>\n

The scientists\u2014Kate Armstrong<\/a>, Ph.D., Myanmar Program Coordinator in the Institute of Systematic Botany<\/a>, and Damon P. Little, Ph.D.<\/a>, Associate Curator of Bioinformatics in the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics<\/a>\u2014are part of a major Garden research program to discover and document Myanmar\u2019s botanical diversity, build the country\u2019s capacity to carry out plant research, and promote the sustainable use of its forests.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Leaving from the village of Gatthu, Drs. Armstrong and Little, their colleagues from the Myanmar Forest Department, and a team of porters spent a month in Hkakaborazi National Park, which takes its\u00a0name\u00a0from one of the park’s\u00a0mountains, the highest\u00a0in Myanmar. The researchers\u00a0hiked\u00a0125 miles in a giant loop that took them northeast to the Chinese border and then west before turning south for the\u00a0return to Gatthu.<\/p>\n

They soon fell into a pattern of walking\u00a0and rest\u00a0days, collecting plant specimens as they hiked through the dense forest on one day and then spending the following day pressing and drying the plants to preserve them. Eventually, their specimens will join the 7.8 million preserved plants in the Garden\u2019s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>. Duplicate specimens will go to institutions in Myanmar and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Drs. Armstrong and Little summed up their field trip to northern Myanmar with some statistics<\/a> that were, by turns, daunting and diverting.<\/p>\n

But this selection of photos offers vivid evidence of what life is like on a research expedition to one of the remotest parts of the world.<\/p>\n

This slideshow requires JavaScript.<\/p>

<\/div>\n

This research was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (award 1457702) \u201cFloristic inventory of a neglected biodiversity hotspot: Myanmar’s Northern Forest Complex.\u201d\u00a0Dr. Armstrong is the Principal Investigator on this grant.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Garden\u2019s Myanmar Program is also supported by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two NYBG scientists\u2014Kate Armstrong, Ph.D., Myanmar Program Coordinator in the Institute of Systematic Botany, and Damon P. Little, Ph.D., Associate Curator of Bioinformatics in the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics\u2014are part of a major Garden research program to discover and document Myanmar\u2019s botanical diversity, build the country\u2019s capacity to carry out plant research, and promote the sustainable use of its forests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":2666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[44,116],"tags":[257,658,659,617,73,657,311,359],"yoast_head":"\nForest Primeval: Trekking Through Myanmar's Northern Forest Complex - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2016\/04\/forest-primeval-trekking-through-myanmars-northern-forest-complex\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Forest Primeval: Trekking Through Myanmar's Northern Forest Complex - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two NYBG scientists\u2014Kate Armstrong, Ph.D., Myanmar Program Coordinator in the Institute of Systematic Botany, and Damon P. 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