Preparing field research and some pictures

Another week has gone by and I am still feeling well here. I have even extended my stay in Phnom Penh for one week, before moving to Battambang - a smaller and less dense city, nearly 300km north-west to Phnom Penh. I will conduct the biodiversity indicator testing close to Battambang - most probably in the "Kanghot irrigation" area. CIRAD has been involved in some projects there and already has a proper data basis on the farms and fields. While I'm still here in Phnom Penh, I will mostly refine and concretize the sampling methods for the measurements in the field.

TW: technical vocabulary and nerding

Most certainly, I will capture and measure insects and spiders with various traps and sampling methods to measure abundance and richness. Besides the insect-sampling I will also assess other ecosystem compounds like diversity of non-crop plants, landscape structures (trees, hedges, field margins, etc.), and agricultural practices. I will assume, that insect diversity, which serves as an overall biodiversity proxy, correlates positively with landscape heterogeneity and "naturalness", and correlates negatively with the intensification of agricultural practices, such as irrigation systems, fertilization, tillage, pesticide load, etc. The conditions for this assumptions to be fulfilled, are (1) that biodiversity is affected by gradients of change in landscape and practices, and (2) that the selected indicators for measuring insect diversity are susceptible enough to these abundant gradients.

I also hope, that I can record soundscapes in the ricefields of birds and bats, and do some amphibian-sampling. But I will have to discuss with my supervisors, if either of them are possible. Soundscape recording requires technological resources and for sampling amphibians, I must be in the fields during night-time.

Besides the testing of possible indicators in the rice fields, I will also conduct some focus group discussions with the local communities. But we haven't discussed specific activities yet on this.

I am positively surprised, by how well the work flow goes, and I'm happy to have good guidance and support by Lucile and Mathilde. It makes me feel good about the process of the internship.

Besides work, I have been comfortably living in a tall building in the heart of the city, sharing the appartment with an expat from Russia. The building is quite luxurious and it even has a pool on the rooftop with a very wide view over the city.

Living in this appartment for this short time period is ok, but it still feels a bit weird, as I am actively participating in a visible and obvious disparity of lifestyles between local people and expats. I hope to find a more humble appartment in Battambang.

On the weekend I have again been playing Ultimate, I went on market tours again, and I took a boat tour on the Mekong river.

On sunday it rained for a short time period and it felt really great to have everything a bit cooled down for a while.