Nathan Gregory's First Email from Kenya
Dear Dan (Professor Rubenstein)
Sorry that it has taken me a few days to send you an update, but there
have been very few minutes during the day to write emails. So far, the
course is going very well, and the students seem to be enjoying
themselves. All are curious about every aspect of the system. More
importantly, the group has great chemistry, and they are a joy to be
around.
The campsite is very nice, and all of the students are happy with their
tents, the showers, etc. Nick Georgiadis and I changed the daily
schedule so that we spend the morning doing some type of field activity
before attending lecture at 10:30. The students have about 1 and 1/2
to 2 hours after lunch to read, write emails, and enter data before an
afternoon field activity. On Monday, we spent the afternoon distance
sampling dik-diks on Mpala and began to look at that data yesterday.
Yesterday morning I took the students on a bird walk along the river,
and we did a habitat assessment exercise on El Karama yesterday
afternoon. So far, Nick Georgiadis has covered the factors influencing
the distribution of savannas in Africa and the ecology and
conservation challenges of the Ewaso Ecosystem. He has also lectured
on estimating population abundance and experimental design and
alternatives to the null hypothesis. Today he will be lecturing on
dung and herbivore dynamics and other bottom-up processes. We went to
the black cotton this morning to see the KLEE plots and talk about
ants.
Nathan
Go to the next page..... Professor Dan Rubenstein's Email from March 6, 2006
Return to opening page Greg's Semester in Kenya
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February 8, 2006