Today, as an environmental ambassador of Brazil, I will share more information and knowledge about the Brazilian environment issue and a relevant project that I belonged to. Few months ago, I introduced about commercial forest in Brazil.  

To summarize, the idea of commercial forest is that it can be the solution for reduction of CO² emissions and provide people with products such as furniture, stationary items and cosmetics etc. Therefore, using these trees lead to avoid cutting down natural forest to supply products. When we raise a certain type of pets, we need to know what they like, what they cannot eat, what is good for them and what can we need for them. We need to research for them to grow up properly and make them healthy.

There's question! Is there any method to figure out the information for growing the commercial forest properly?  YES!! There is!  There are techniques and research group for this! That is the one that I belong to!! Let me share the project and information from now on!!

Along my university degree I had the chance to join a research called EUCFLUX. It has been developing in the Experiment Forest Station of Itatinga – SP (Brazil). This project was launched with 3 research groups including IPEF, ESALQ/University of Sao Paulo, which is my university and North Carolina State University and companies that participated in technical-scientific and administrative meetings held from 2005 to 2006.

This project named as EUCFLUX is aimed to estimate the amount of water, sunlight, carbon and nutrients of eucalyptus production cycle.  That is, it is possible to obtain information of the environmental variables, which influence the productivity of the forest, ground fertility etc. To do that, there is the special tower called the flux tower!

The flux tower technique is to measure CO² and H₂O exchanges and could be applied to flat lands, the type of land such as forest or agriculture properly. After finding the suitable site, tower is built with some parts of micrometeorological equipment imported from the US, England and the Netherlands. After all parts are assembled with INRA, CIRAD and USP assist, data is gathering continuously by safety systems. This tower enables to understand the mechanisms by controlling time (from seconds to years) and spatial scales (from some meters to kilometers)

Therefore, I was so pleased to be part of this research team and promising international project. I and other four individuals from my university faculty spent about three weeks into the woods to perform what they have to do.

It is a great personal experience on living with some colleagues and with no access to daily habits. For instance, the only things we could enjoy were nature and a limited people. Even we brought the lunch boxes from station and ate all together even in the forest.

Yes, I can say "only" because someone like me who lives and grows in São Paulo city, the situation and atmosphere to live into the forest is completely different. In the city there are a lot of cars, people, entertainment places and technology while we cannot find enjoy those kinds of stuffs in the forest. However, due to the fact that I love animals, plants and the nature itself, the period that I dedicated to cooperate with the research was a pleasure and I was able to learn several forestry concepts and practical activities. Above all, the opportunity to protect the environment is my fundamental goal since I selected the major, environment engineering.  

Every day, we woke up early about 6 am and we headed to the field in order to make measurements of the high of trees, diameter of trunks and soil respiration. In addition, we collected leaves from the ground of the forest to take to the lab in order to analyze the biomass nutrients quality. As I said before, measurement of the nutrient enable to set up what kinds of factors effects on plants. That is, long term monitoring of the carbon, water and nutrient in forest is significantly important to suppose the use of natural resources, effect of the climate and sustainability of such ecosystems.

As you can see one of the pictures, the little house is to keep some instruments such as soil respiration measurements. To perform these sorts of activities needs a lot of samples from numerous filed and lab activities, which is very bored.  The field sampling methodology becomes impractical while flux towers become the standard tool for assessment of atmosphere and different ecosystems, forests or agricultural.  This tower is 35meters high so that when I went up to observe the equipment, it was quite afraid. You can see how the tower looks like with the pictures below.

After finished our lunch, we went back to work until about 4 pm. It was time to go back to the guest house of the Experimental Forest Station of Itatinga – SP (Brazil). The accommodation we stayed for 3weeks is also made of woods. We shared idea of what we did that day and discuss about our job before going to bed.

People take the air, soil, water and trees for granted. Some people are not really considered them as a creatures like us, which can be hurt, happy and disappeared as well.  My job to measure them, handle them as a precious creature and protect them is to have a privilege,which lead me to my dream. This project will be essential for long-term sustainability analyses. I have heard that currently, there are over 500 flux towers spread all over the world. I hope that these towers could be the starting point to spread the useful source into the world.