Ethan Jensen's summer was that of a typical University of Nebraska-Lincoln student.
He navigated daily through rainforest plots among trees nearly 230 feet tall, and he wore traditional Iban garb while celebrating the festival of some of Borneo's indigenous people.
OK, so maybe Jensen's summer was far from the norm.
Jensen, a junior fish and wildlife management major, and three other UNL students traveled to Borneo in Southeast Asia for a six-week excursion through some of the island's extensive rainforests.
The area in which the students conducted their research is well known for its soaring canopies. Substantial competition exists between trees to grow tall enough for a position high in the forest, where more light can be intercepted.
The group measured tree heights, trunk diameters and crown dimensions to determine tree allometry, or the relationship between the tree's height and shape. This can help in understanding the growth structure of the trees in the canopy.
Each day, the researchers worked in the field from roughly 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., warding off mosquitoes and leeches, to obtain tree measurements using tape measures, laser rangefinders and clinometers. A clinometer measures vertical angles, which are used to determine the height of a tree without having to climb it.
One factor in determining the ultimate height of a tree is the soil type in which it grows, the students found.
The group is one of the first to study whether resources in the soil and light availability in the rainforest combine to influence both the size and shape of a tree, wrote Sabrina Russo, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UNL who led the study, in an e-mail interview.
To determine how much light a tree captures, the students used a specialized lens to take pictures of the canopy hovering above each tree. With the assistance of unique computer software, the photos can be used to infer roughly how much light a tree can receive in a year.
Russo and the four undergraduates have spent the past five weeks back in the United States working to find a definitive conclusion for their six weeks' worth of data.
"We knew (before we left) we wanted to study the relationship between the way trees grow and their soil type," Jensen said, "but we didn't know exactly what our research would bring."
Their analysis has yet to be completed, but already the group has stumbled upon an interesting finding: The trees growing on poorer soil tend to grow taller than trees maturing on more nutrient-rich soil.
Russo said this counter-intuitive discovery may be due to higher levels of light availability in areas with poorer soil, but more research must be done to prove this hypothesis.
This fall, the students plan to work with a mathematician at UNL to create a model for their data.
They already have begun preparing their information for future publication in a scientific journal, and the group hopes to have its work submitted to a journal by the end of the spring semester.
teresalostroh@dailynebraskan.com
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