Conserving the Amazon
Environmental Sciences Receive 2.4 Million for Wetlands Research
Caught in a thunderstorm, a young boy on Marajó Island returns home from gathering bacuripari fruits in a floodplain forest at the mouth of the Amazon. During the rainy season, the only way to get around estuarine islands is by canoe. Geography Professor Nigel Smith captured this image on a research trip to the region in 2000.
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded UF ecologist Michael Goulding and geographer Nigel Smith a $2.4 million grant to fund a science-based conservation project in the Amazon wetlands. The unsolicited grant is the first given to UF from the four-year-old foundation established by the co-creator of the Intel Corporation, Gordon Moore, and his wife Betty.
“The Amazon has had a lot of attention in the media in the last 20–30 years, mainly focusing on deforestation, building of highways, and opening up the Amazon for development and settlement,” says Smith, a professor of geography and co-investigator on the grant. “Since at least a sixth of all freshwater flowing off the face of the Earth comes out of the mouth of the Amazon, what we are trying to do is shift some of the focus to transnational changes that are underway in the river areas, from the Andes to the Atlantic.”
Smith and Goulding will collaborate with Brazilian and Peruvian researchers to stimulate international and interstate treaties, agreements and legislation that will promote the conservation of aquatic biodiversity in the region and the river basin ecosystem on which it depends. Government agencies, non-profit organizations, development banks and educational institutions will use the research findings to promote better conservation strategies in the Amazon.
The grant will be used to fund fieldwork on the ecology of Amazon fish migrations as a means to focus attention on aquatic ecosystem functions. Major fieldwork also will be completed on the ecology of human impacts in Andes-Amazon headwaters. Finally, an educational book series on the ecology and geography of Amazon wetlands and their resources will be written by an international team of scientists.
—Buffy Lockette
Photo:
Nigel Smith