UG students secure research grant for natural resource management

Feb 16, 2018 News

---

Three University of Guyana [UG] students have received research grants for natural resource management.  This development was realized through strategic collaboration forged by UG with the University of Florida and the World Wildlife Fund-Guianas.
The students benefiting from the research grants are Ms. Wilda Hungito, Mr. Mark Ram, and Ms. Nadia Hunte, who were identified for research awards in support of their graduate studies.
The students became eligible after they made successful proposals that provided important information for natural resource management that will affect the livelihoods of many Guyanese.
The grants were made under an academic programme to strengthen technical capacity for natural resource management in Guyana. The programme is funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation [Norad] under the title, ‘Achieving a Green State: Building human capacity for natural resource management in Guyana’.
The project aims to place UG at the forefront of high-impact academic research on natural resource management with a strong emphasis on scientific publishing and policy development.
Ram’s project entitled ‘Impact of mangrove loss on fisheries’ is one that gives attention to the fact that mangroves provide important services for coastal communities in Guyana.
Among Ram’s focus is that over the last decade Guyana has lost and continues to lose thousands of hectares of its mangrove forests, with potentially serious consequences for the US$55.4 million fisheries sector that employs over 6,000 Guyanese.
Ram’s research aims to quantify how loss of mangroves affects fish abundance along the coast of Region Three [Essequibo Island West Demerara], Region Four [Demerara-Mahaica, Region Five [Mahaica-Berbice] and Region Six [Berbice-Corentyne].
As part of his project, Ram is expected to collect data on the abundance of different fish species in the areas that have lost mangroves and areas where mangroves are healthy.
He will be working in collaboration with the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project and the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute to quantify the benefits of mangroves to the fisheries sector.
Hungito’s project on the other hand is one aimed at examining how trees grow after logging. The project takes into consideration that the forestry sector contributed 2.27 percent of Guyana’s GDP in 2016 and employed 20,000 persons. As such an important question for sustainable forestry management implemented in Guyana’s forests is the growth of trees after the fact.
Moreover, Hungito’s study is expected to examine how branches of tree crowns on the edges of canopy gaps, created by the logging, respond to the changes to light during the first 23 years after logging.
The motivation for studying this phenomenon is that the range of angles over which trees with asymmetrical crowns [that is, when branches are located to one side of the tree causing heavy lean] can be felled is limited.
The forest damage and the personal risk to chainsaw operators increases with crown lean, as directional felling, a foundation of reduced-impact logging, becomes harder to implement, Hungito has observed.
Meanwhile, Hunte, the third grant recipient, has taken on the task of understanding the importance of trees in the capital city of Georgetown. As such, she has essentially been studying how urban development in Georgetown has led to loss of natural habitats.
This has allowed the researcher to determine that the loss of tree cover in Georgetown will have serious implications for the well-being of Georgetown’s population with a hotter climate. Part of her research has also seen her querying, “Have you noticed it’s always cooler under trees?”
Trees in Georgetown, according to Hunte, receive little to no maintenance and many are being removed to erect residential and commercial buildings.
For instance, the mahogany trees that long graced Regent Street, are now nearly gone, Hunte has observed. For this reason, she is on a mission to map historical and present-day location of trees using satellite imagery to understand where trees have been lost and where they still stand.
Her project will enable continuous monitoring of tree cover across the city and will serve as a baseline to monitor changes in tree diversity and abundance in the future. Hunte will also study how Guyanese connect with nature in urban spaces.
The final output of her analysis will be a map of trees in Georgetown that could be used for urban planning.  This project has been deemed important by Hunte, since protecting trees in Georgetown and other towns will support and promote biodiversity [important for Guyana’s budding bird tourism sector], recreate green spaces, reclaim the ‘Garden City Status’, and develop innovative green public spaces, while retaining the unique cultural and historical attributes of Georgetown.

---

---