200 researchers to explore Papua New Guinea's biodiversity

How many species live on Earth?

The answer to this question probably resides in the study of biodiversity hotspots. Six years after the Santo expedition in Vanuatu, and 2 years after the Mozambique-Madagascar expedition, scientists are once again embarking on a voyage of discovery to learn about our planet's biodiversity.

Led by France's National Museum of Natural History, Pro-Natura International and the French Institut de recherche pour le developpement (IRD), the expedition team will spend 3 months exploring Papua New Guinea, beginning in October 2012.

From the Bismarck Sea to the slopes of Mount Wilhelm, the Papua New Guinea expedition will see off nearly 200 researchers, students and volunteers.

Land expedition: the objective is to gather new data on plant and animal species distribution in the Mount Wilhelm's forests, from sea level to the tree line (altitude of about 4,000 metres).

Marine expedition: the objective is to document the specific composition of some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, from coast to deep waters (depths of 1200 metres), using a wide array of qualitative and quantitative methods. Artificial reefs will be sunk during the 2012 expedition, and later collected in December 2013.

The National Museum of Natural History has launched a website dedicated to the expedition program. The bilingual website (French / English) will give readers an opportunity to go behind the scenes of the 2012-2013 Papua New Guinea expedition and follow scientists' daily activities through photos, news and interviews.

The 2012-2013 Papua New Guinea expedition is organized jointly by the National Museum of Natural History (Paris, France), Pro-Natura International and the French Institut de recherche pour le developpement, in partnership with the University of Papua New Guinea, the Binatang Research Center and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and financed by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Total Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the EDF Foundation, Entrepose Contracting, the French Pacific Fund and the government of New Caledonia.(PRNewswire/AsiaNet)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Opening of public lands for agri-developments

Image
For many decades, vast tracts of forest lands are damaged across the Philippines. These are either the handiwork of nature like soil erosions, landslides, tremors or they're simply man-made due to humans' greed for immediate cash if only to survive. By all means, those who are within the proximity of the forests are free to do whatever they thought was best for them to survive or earn fast cash.  Notably, the most common practice that upland dwellers do is the cutting of firewood, slash-and-burn farming to plant crops even if these activities run counter to established forestry regulations that forbid them from doing these activities without permission from the authorities. Without a land of their own, they have to do it anyway. While some armed groups would simply engage themselves in illegal logging activities for profits. Forestry reports said that they even encroach on other's logging concessions to cut trees for sale to interested buyers. When I was working with the Mi
Read more

China is to blame for the pandemic spread

Image
Had the Chinese government taken the initiative or done enough to immediately contain the novel Coronavirus from spreading waywardly into other areas, this pandemic wouldn't have gone too far to pester other countries like Italy, the United States and the Philippines whose governments had declared a lockdowns thus causing extreme fears among the people, not to mention the derailments of some economies worldwide. But the provincial government, where Wuhan is an integral part of, acted too late to lockdown the place. The local government in Wuhan should have prevented residents from getting out, especially those who were infected by the virus. Sorry to say this, but the Wuhan government officials were lackadaisical in their approach to the health dilemma, thinking that the problem was just an ordinary matter which didn't require much attention. Until the problem got worse resulting to some deaths in the area had they known of Covid-19's serious impacts on the health of innoce
Read more