{"id":806,"date":"2014-02-07T13:44:45","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T18:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=806"},"modified":"2014-02-07T14:09:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:09:42","slug":"an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/","title":{"rendered":"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Collecting in a 30-Hour Rainstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabian A. Michelangeli, Ph.D.<\/a>, is an Associate Curator of the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>. His research focuses in part on the evolution, identification, and classification of neotropical plants. This is the third of four posts<\/a> about an expedition last year to Suriname in northeastern South America.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Augustus Falls as it plummets from the summit of Tafelberg to the forest below<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Collecting in remote areas always presents interesting challenges, some of which are precisely the reason we visit these places. Tafelberg, a table mountain in central Suriname,\u00a0is an isolated mountain that has only been explored a handful of times in the\u00a060 years since the first ascent by New York Botanical Garden scientist Basset Maguire<\/a>, which I described in a previous post. One of the reasons\u00a0the vegetation is\u00a0unique is the extraordinary amount of rain that falls here every year. Although our team of six scientists had planned our visit for the \u201cdry\u201d season, a rainforest is always\u2026well, rainy. The difference between the seasons is not whether it rains or not, but the number of hours that it rains and the total amount of rainfall.<\/p>\n

On our third day on the summit, the storm clouds that had been menacing us since the first afternoon finally came over the mountain. The skies opened for more than\u00a030 hours straight. Because our time was limited, we kept working through the downpours.
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\nCollecting plants in the rain can be a real challenge because\u00a0it becomes difficult to press, process, and photograph all the samples. Also,\u00a0the \u201ctrail\u201d we cut in the morning couldn’t\u00a0be seen on our way back, and we had\u00a0to rely on our compass and GPS to find\u00a0the camp. The small rivers that we could easily cross in the morning became very dangerous in the afternoon on our return to the camp. Fortunately, two members of our support staff, Mani and Uwawa, again came through and, in one instance, built a bridge over a creek in less than five\u00a0minutes,\u00a0allowing us to cross it\u00a0with our collecting equipment and samples.<\/p>\n

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After a few days at our camp near Augustus Creek, we decided that we needed to move\u00a0to the center of the mountain\u00a0to\u00a0access the higher parts easily and to be able to explore other types of vegetation. That meant that all of our equipment would have to be moved across the forest and creeks.\u00a0But this time we would not have\u00a0the aid of the helicopter. We’d only have our backpacks.<\/p>\n

The expedition to Tafelberg was funded by a grant to University of Kansas entomologist Andrew Short from the National Geographic Society.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fabian Michelangeli and his team continue a rain-soaked expedition atop “Table Mountain.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[116],"tags":[249,225,248,184,228,226],"yoast_head":"\nAn Expedition to Tafelberg: Collecting in a 30-Hour Rainstorm - 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\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Collecting in a 30-Hour Rainstorm - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fabian Michelangeli and his team continue a rain-soaked expedition atop "Table Mountain."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-07T18:44:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-02-07T19:09:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/TafelbergF.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fabian Michelangeli\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/\",\"name\":\"Science Talk Archive\",\"description\":\"Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/TafelbergF.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/TafelbergF.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-collecting-in-a-30-hour-rainstorm\/\",\"name\":\"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Collecting in a 30-Hour Rainstorm - 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