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ISSUE 12, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2014
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News
SCIENCE@SAFE

Early October saw our bi-annual Science at SAFE symposium held at Imperial College, Silwood Campus. The meeting was a great chance for all involved at SAFE to mingle in an urban setting & talk science. Talks ranged from senior players at SAFE giving emphasis on directional focus & outlining aims for the future to previous & present researchers at SAFE discussing their campaigns & divulging results thus far. It was great to see the fruits of the  collaborative efforts & huge amount of work put into the project so far. We would like to thank all the participants & attendees & look forward to see you all in the field or at the next symposium.
SNOWDONIA 

Thanks to Ollie Wearn & Marion Pfeiffer for helping to organize a weekend for a few brave SAFE affiliates at Silwoods Snowdonia mountain hut after the Science@SAFE Symposium. The trip, which was an exercise in patience & fortitude, was awesome. Dogged by delays, poor phone reception, amenity dysfunction, heinous flooding & good old proverbial wire-crossing, we managed to overcome these trivial obstacles to enjoy a brilliant if not freezing summit lunch on beautiful Snowdonia (for Malaysian residents present the contrast in weather conditions prevailing in northern Wales & Borneo where striking). All involved will share lifelong memories of trying to stay warm in the freezing hut, trying to find a pub in Northern Wales that would serve us dinner, trying to start a coal fire in the freezing hut, trying to keep our feet dry bringing in buckets of water from the beck & enjoying a hot breakfast after finally getting electricity. However the lasting memories will surely be the camaraderie that overcame adversity & the outstanding beauty of Snowdonia National Park.
 
CONGRATULATIONS CLAUDIA GRAY!
 
A massive congratulations to Claudia Gray who last month became the first researcher to complete a PhD thesis based on research at SAFE. Her paper on Riparian reserves in Oil Palm plantations- Biodiversity, Ecological processes & Ecosystem services, can be read here.
BIOCRETE 

We were visited recently by Kirsten Pont who is an Arkiterk intern out in KK for three & a half months, with 2 weeks at SAFE. From Lieth in Edinborough, Scotland she was out to help teach builders at SAFE the methods for mixing & applying biocrete. Most of our new buildings at SAFE will utilize biocrete with oil palm fiber, which is a waste product of the oil palm industry, as its main ingredient. This is a great new adaptation by Arkitrek based on Hempcrete, having previously tried coconut & rice husks.  Mixing the oil palm kernel with sand, lime & water to make a sustainable bi product of the oil palm industry that provides great insulation & temperature regulation. For more on this wonderful innovation click here 
 
NEW GENERATOR

Fantastic news for those of you who have been used to power surges & uncharged batteries for the last few years, we have a brand new 30KW generator! Recently installed by Alfren Tuling (aka Abu) from Malua, & fully operational as of this month we have moved into the sleek & stylish age of (relatively) noiseless & painless energy supply. 
 
SKY TV

We were recently visited by a free lance camera trapping technician representing SKY TV, who are filming a special on cats to be aired next year. Duncan Parker had a couple of days with us teaching Alecks, Sabri & Ryan the ins & outs of DSLR camera trapping. Duncan has had previous experience in many exotic locales but this was his first Borneo visit. We look forward to having him again & fingers crossed for some results.
 

Resident Researchers & Volunteers
JENNIFER SHERIDAN

Jennifer Sheridan is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Her work at SAFE focuses on amphibian community responses to disturbance and riparian buffer size. She has been surveying tadpoles in the study streams since 2011, and since 2012 has also been measuring aquatic primary productivity in order to determine whether amphibian community diversity is more closely related to aquatic or terrestrial productivity. Dr. Sheridan & her research assistants, Sarah & Edmund, just completed eight tadpole surveys on each stream, as well as primary productivity measurements. During their surveys, Sarah & Edmund were lucky enough to see a large reticulated python, Pedostibes rugosus (a tree toad not commonly recorded in this part of Sabah), the often heard but up til now never seen at SAFE Megophrys nasuta & the rare Varanus dumerillii. Dr. Sheridan will return to SAFE in May for another round of surveys with new student volunteers from Singapore.
SARAH MCGRATH
 
Sarah is from Raliegh, North Carolina in the USA & is out at SAFE volunteering for Dr. Jen Sheridan. She will be out at SAFE for a total of three months working with Edmund doing tadpole surveys. This involves going out to our riparian transects & using a “tadbowl” to see how many of what species of tadpole are in that transect. A “tadbowl” is a clear plastic container used to see the bottom of the stream to make it easy/possible to see what tadpoles are present. Sarah did her under grad. at North Carolina State University in Zoology & her previous field work has been with US Geological Survey doing stream transects to find adult & larval Salamanders as well as mapping wetland environments in several National Parks in Maryland & Virginia. She has also worked with the Maria Mitchell Association at their natural science museum on Nantucket Island, conducting snake surveys & assisting in conservation efforts for the endangered American burying Beetle on Nantucket Island.



 
EDMUND COLBERT JOANNES

From Kampung Muhibah, Ranau, Sabah, Edmund is at SAFE assisting in Dr. Jen Sheridans research with Sarah. They are working the streams together & while Sarah is busy with the “tadbowl” Edmund is dip netting for tadpoles. Edmund, who is a veteran of the tourist industry, having worked in hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Thailand & Cambodia & more recently as a tour guide in Sabah & Sarawak has a deep interest in bugs & insects as well as photography. He is also a musician & in the evening Edmund & Abdullah could be heard serenading the camp with their Malay compositions. This is however Edmunds first foray into the world of science & we have to say he is a natural! Edmund is married with three children. His wife Nora & two daughters, Cassandra & Chelsea & son, Edmund Jr. live together in Kg. Muhiba where he will be returning after his field session.


 
MOHD. ABDULLAH ABD. GHANI
 
Abdullah is from Kampung Pimping, Membakut near Beaufort on the beautiful south coast of Sabah. He completed his Under Grad. & Masters at Universiti Putra Malaysia in forestry. He is now doing his PhD at Aberdeen University & his supervisors are Proff. Dr. David Burslem (University of Aberdeen -Ecology), Dr. David Coomes  (UNI Cambridge -LIDAR) from NERC in the BALI team & Dr. Phua Mui How (UMS-GIS). His PhD is on biodiversity modelling of epiphytes using LIDAR in Sabah. He is currently out at SAFE as ground crew for ARSF NERC doing control points & atmospheric measurements for LIDAR analysis. For those who don’t know LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) technology is using laser beams emitted by a scanner which can be mounted on either vehicles or aeroplanes to  come out with a points cloud that can be analysed for 3D modelling of forest structure- for more check this .The very special crew & aircraft have been flown out to Sabah for this exercise.    
 

 

The first time this technology was used in Sabah was at Sepilok & Danum by UMS LIDAR team on a small scale in July 2013. So this is only the second time LIDAR has been used in Sabah, but on a grand scale, taking measurements at Maliau, Danum, Sepilok Forest Reserve & the SAFE site. As well as LIDAR the plane will also be taking Hyper-spectral band images. Abdullahs equipment consists of a DGPS  with an accuracy to 2cm for a control point for the plane to lock the scanning system & he also gives updates on onsite weather conditions- clouds, sunrays & haze. Using micro tops he also takes measurements of atmospheric conditions, aerosol thickness & water column, for correction of LIDAR image during post processing of analysis.

Abdullah is a man of many talents, one of them being music, & during downtime at SAFE he was serenading camp residents with his own compositions & jamming with Edmond, Ryan & Kici from the building team. He even wrote & recorded a song about SAFE during his stay, we hope to share it with you in the not too distant future.

 
DR SABINE BOTH

I am Postdoc in the BALI research consortium, when I am not in the forests in Malaysia, I am based in Aberdeen, Scotland. My research focuses on biodiversity­–ecosystem function relationships, which previously I had conducted in subtropical Chinese forests and in a big forest biodiversity experiment, BEF-China. 
It is easily to spot when flying into Malaysian Borneo that land-use and human modification have a huge impact on biodiversity. In order to understand how this impact has altered the functional diversity of tropical forest ecosystems, I will conduct an extensive functional plant trait campaign starting in spring 2015. Together with David Burslem, David Coomes, Yadvinder Malhi and many others, we will measure a wide range of morphological and physiological traits within the tree communities of the 1 ha Intensive Carbon plots. You will notice a big group of ~20 people, collecting branches, scanning leaves, measuring photosynthesis and leaf spectra and many other things for several months next year in SAFE, Maliau Basin and Lambir Hills! 

 
We hypothesise that trait diversity declines with increasing human disturbance, and furthermore, the BALI project will use this traits-based approach to explore the links between functional diversity and biogeochemistry across different scales. I study the consequences of these changes for biogeochemical cycling in a manipulative leaf litter experiment. This autumn we set up experimental plots in the SAFE fragment E and Maliau Basin. We reciprocally transplanted leaf litter originating from two forest types (old growth and logged forest) and will monitor biogeochemical cycles, soil microbial communities and other properties. Hence, we will be able to explore if litter traits play a more vital role in decomposition and nutrient turnover than environmental conditions or site effects.
With these and other studies the BALI project aims to shed light into the biogeochemical impacts of tropical forest degradation, agricultural conversion and biodiversity loss.

 

DAFYDD ELIAS



Dafydd is a research scientist working for the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Lancaster, UK as part of the Biodiversity and Land Use Impacts on tropical ecosystems project (BALI). His work concerns changes in soil physicochemical characteristics, microbial functional diversity and abundance with land use change from old growth forest to secondary forests and oil palm plantations. He has just completed a six week fieldwork campaign with a team of researchers from Aberdeen University working between sites at SAFE & Maliau Basin. Fieldwork involved preparation & establishment of litter manipulative experiments, litter decomposition experiments and pre-treatment soil sampling across a series of locations within forest fragment E at SAFE and at Maliau Basin. These experiments will run for two years and allow him to investigate the effect of a change in litter quality, as a result of logging activities, on ecologically important soil microbial & fungal communities and determine, to what extent, disturbed tropical ecosystems maintain microbially mediated ecosystem functions in comparison to primary forests. 


 

 

DR ULLY H KRITZLER



Originally from Germany, Ully has been based in Scotland since the last millennium (he shows no sign of wanting to leave) and is currently a research technician at the University of Aberdeen. As a member of the B.A.L.I.  consortium he was recently out at SAFE assisting the set-up of field manipulation experiments alongside  Sabine,  Dafydd and Ming. His first time working in the tropics was in 2005 where he was part of a self-funded and self-organised research expedition in the lowland rainforest in Peru where he investigated forest gap sizes and their impact on soil characteristics along transects. His previous research interests are in plant-soil-microbe-nutrient processes, pathways and interactions. His role in this project will be mainly focusing on plant traits (which is new to him), but will also use many of his skills. In his previous life he became a qualified electrician and a taught fridge engineer and subsequently a foreman, head waiter & delivery driver (don’t ask). Somewhere along the way he picked up a sizeable repertoire of folk & country songs (some of which are best not mentioned in mixed company).




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MING NIE

Ming is research scientist with a career spanning years & continents, having studied in China & the USA, he is currently based at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He was out at Maliau & SAFE this year with the B.A.L.I. consortium setting up their experiments. Some of Mings previous research has been in Microbial & Ecosystem ecology & the goal of his present research at SAFE is to quantify rates of biochemical cycling & biosphere-atmosphere exchange across the SAFE land-use gradient. Specifically, he will investigate net primary productivity and plant-soil fluxes of carbon and nutrients, decomposition of plant tissues and soil organic matter, soil fluxes of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous, canopy gas exchange and atmospheric composition & soil microbial diversity and activity.

SAFE Project Research Assistants

IKA & ZININ
Ika Robecca hails from Kampung Segama, Lahad Datu. She has been working at SAFE now since 2010 & before that she was with INFAPRO in Danum Valley planting seedling trees in the nursery there. Always versatile, Ika is to be found in the field assisting researchers & our core project work, in the lab entering data & performing office duties & can also fill-in as chief cook, she cooks a mean curry. Ika keeps a wonderful garden full of vegetables & flowers & she also loves to knit.
 
Zinin Al Ramadhan Bin Shukur is from Bukit Garam, Kota Kinabatangan. Before SAFE he was staff in an oil palm Plantation in Telupid & worked in road maintenance at Batu Putih. He has been with SAFE over two years now & is one of our main RA's assisting in field work possessing many jungle skills including tree climbing. He & his wife Rosida have two sons Zainizan & Zizanin & a daughter Zaidahtul. Outside of work his passions include football, takraw & jogging & he is often to be seen in down times locked in a battle of the minds over the chess board.

Species profiles


Wallace's flying frog

Racophorus nigropalmatus
 

This is the largest tree frog on Borneo, and was originally described by Boulenger in 1895, from specimens collected by Alfred Russel Wallace. This frog generally lives in the canopy, so is rarely seen except when it descends to the forest floor to breed, usually after very heavy rains. They breed in standing water, and like other members of this genus, they create a foam nest into which eggs are deposited, and tadpoles eventually drop into water below the nest. These frogs are excellent gliders, able to travel up to 30 m horizontally at angles as low as 25 degrees (see Emerson et al. 1990). Their gliding abilities are helped by their extensive webbing, and several skin flaps along their limbs.
Interestingly, juveniles of this species are brick red with pale orange spots, and are covered with bumps on their skin! This sort of colour difference between juveniles and adults is fairly rare in frogs, though not unheard of, but the combination of colour and textural difference is quite rare.
Generally speaking, these frogs are just super cool!


 

 


 

 
Elephant Ear orchid

Phalaenopsis gigantea

 

This spectacular orchid is endemic to Borneo & is a celebrity of the plant kingdom. With massive leathery leaves over 60cm in length, dimensions only dreamed of in the orchid world prior to it's discovery in 1909 in Kalimantan. This plant regularly takes the grand prize in orchid shows around the world with it's citrus scented blooms & is highly sought after in horticultural circles. Considered rare in nature, it's preferred habitat is the drier eastern facing hills in East Sabah, consequently it is to be found in the SAFE study site. Aren't we lucky!
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