> It was interesting last night; there was a documentary on TVO (a
> > station run by the government of Ontario) about a recent expedition to
> > Guyana. The area they went to had so few indigenous people that the
> > animals had virtually no fear of human beings. They had never been
> > hunted. And these people, a moderately large and well equipped party,
> > were the first scientists to visit the area. They said nothing about
> > orchids, but they found new species almost every day. The area in
> > question was enormous, and yet the area the team was able to sample
> > was likely only of the order of a few hundred square meters.
>
> > The last time I did field work in which we identified and measured
> > every plant within quadrats 10 m square, it took a couple hours to do
> > one quadrat that size, and the team could thoroughly examine every
> > specimen in each quadrat could complete surveys of only 5 or 6 such
> > quadrats. Mind you, as we did it, a part of the record was a detailed
> > map of precisely where each specimen was located within the quadrat.
> > This was in mixed decidious forest in southern Ontario, so the sites
> > we examined were very easy to get to. I can imagine that trying to do
> > similar sampling in Guyana, on the site covered by the documentary I
> > saw last night, would require as much as a quarter of your time just
> > getting to, and returning from, the site, hiking through trackless
> > rainforest (there were no clearings where a helicopter could land, at
> > least none shown in the documentary, and the river was effectively
> > impassable. One of the individual adventures they showed last night
> > involved one individual going into an area that had to be hundreds of
> > square kilometers in extent (to get there, he had to descend a large
> > cliff that separated their main camp site from the area he went to),
> > and yet the individual appeared to be able to sample a transect a few
> > hundred meters long. Mind you, think think he, and a couple other
> > members of that team, were insane to be climbing up or down rock that
> > seemed to crumble at the slightest touch.
>
> > The point is that this documentary highlights just how difficult and
> > expensive it is to properly survey the life in any given ecosystem,
> > and why it is certain, even in the absence of the political conflict
> > in places like Columbia, there are countless species that remain to be
> > discovered. Predators, human and non-human, only make it much more
> > dangerous to even attempt sampling interesting sites. I love going
> > into the boonies, when my health allows it, but I ain't suicidal. >
> > Cheers,
>
> > Ted
>
> > _____________________
>
> > A safe way to get into the boonies is to read 'River of Doubt' by Candace
> > Millard. Its the story of Theodore Roosevelt's journey down an uncharted
> > river in the Amazon, but there's much much more in it than just a journey
> > there and back again. Its part American history, part Brazillian history,
> > part geography, plate techtonics, biology and anthropology. Then after you
> > read it google Roosevelt's great grandson's voyage down the same river with
> > 20th century equipment (I think I found it on Wikipedia) Makes a great > > yarn.
>
> > K Barrett
>
> I read 'River of Doubt' some time last year. Quite a story and it didn't
> make ME want to explore the back country of South America!
> I wish the author would have stayed closer to the story without so much
> time spent on her little excursions into plate tectonics, biology, etc.
> If I want to read about those things, I'll read something written by an
> expert in the field.
> I'm sure the whole trip would be quite different with modern equipment
> (but I'm still not doing it!) and I'll have to read that Wiki article. >
> Steve
That goes to show there's no pleasing everyone all the time.
I read as a scientist who studies history as a form or recreation; probably something that makes me a misfit. ;-)
It is the excursions into context that add to understanding of a story. For example, one of the things I valued in reading Charles Dickens (e.g. Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist) are his descriptions of socioeconomic conditions in which his characters lived. For a Tale of Two Cities, it is the socioeconomic conditions of aristocrats and peasants in France just prior to and just following the French revolution. In Oliver Twist, it is the conditions experienced by the poor in England, and the attitudes of the wealthy toward them, that is relevant. In both cases, his novels add to an understanding of life in western Europe at the worst of the little ice age.
From the sounds of things, the treatment of plate tectonics, biology, &c. the author placed in her book is as useful in understanding what Roosevelt experienced as was Dickens' treatment of socioeconomic context in understanding both the stories he told and more broadly the times in which they were set. Studying Dickens certainly doesn't replace a treatise on European history during the little ice age, but it IS a useful complement to it. Similarly, I would extend my library to include treatises on the ecology of central and south america, should I find some good ones, but at the same time, if Millard's treatment of that science is reasonable, and she has done a good job in documenting what Roosevelt experienced, her book would be a useful and interesting complement to such treatises. One of the things that makes biographies interesting is their ability to help understand what it is like to live in a certain context. I have two autobiographies, written by sisters who lived in one of the earliest British settlements in southern ontario, and I don't think it wold be even possible to begin to understand what their lives were like without knowing something of the ecology and climate of southern ontario at that time. Similarly, I have my doubts about the possibility of understanding Roosevelt's experience without understanding the ecology and topography of the region he explored.
If "River of Doubt" is still in print, I will likely look into buying it later this spring (there are, after all, a number of science texts higher up on my reading list).
Cheers,
Ted