|S| Botanists at work

Botanists at work

Amaury cutting the biomass!

We prepare for a two day hike in the mountains. Six plots located in higher mountains need to be analyzed. With our tents, food, drinks and equipments we leave on our journey. As the plants and biomass that we will collect need to be as dry as possible, we can only leave after 10AM. When we finally leave at 1PM (Georgian planning can get a bit messy sometimes) the sun is already burning badly. A tough road ahead. Our first plot is 400 meter higher up. We drop the bags and Gigo, Elene and Arsena explain us what to do with a plot. They grab a lovely red rope to demarcate a piece of land, 10 by 10 meters. In this space they take one corner to span another line of 5 by 5 meters. This will be the 'real' working area. One person, and that would be me for the rest of the trip, has to cut biomass and collect it in a plastic bag. Four squares of each 50 by 50 centimeters need to be cut from the corners of the 10 by 10 meter zone. This will be dried up later on to obtain valuable information on the nutritients in the biomass. The other botanists collect plants and grasses from the 5 by 5 meters section. They study the biodiversity and estimate the coverage percentage per plant. 'Campanula tridentata', Gigo says after which Elene writes it down. The plants they recognize are tagged with a marker and some tape. This will be Jasmijn's job, which she will successfully fulfill without any Latin spelling mistakes of course... Hum, hum... Unknown plants are put in a separate bag to be identified later on with the help of magnifying glasses and wonderful books.