Jordyn Cotton
After over 28 hours of travel, I touched down in Cairns, Australia and was quickly welcomed into the group. A few stops and just over an hour later, we arrived at our first homebase: the Center for Rainforest Studies in Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands. We spent this week learning about Australia’s wet tropics region and had guest lecturers present on social-economic systems and how they can be implemented into our work. Presentations and workshops were conducted by Dr. Michele Barnes, Dr. Josh Cinner, and two PhD candidates on the importance of bridging the gap between social and ecological sciences. We designed our own social-ecological system where we drew the human-associated drivers onto our chosen ecosystem as well as the ecosystem services provided by that system. This forced us to address the positive and negative human impacts onto the system. From there, we identified the ties between groups of people active in the ecosystem. We categorized these ties into knowledge-sharing, resource-sharing, financial, trust-based, and conflict-based. Once we visualized the various groups and the ties between and within them, we were better able to understand which connections were missing or what needed to be strengthened to achieve our desired outcomes. The inclusion of social networks and other human perspectives and interests into ecological studies was foreign and much more complex than I had initially expected, but the tutorials helped to illustrate how these concepts can be applied to our coral reef research. One major benefit to having guest lecturers at the field station with us was the ability to create personal and professional connections. One night, around a heated game of spoons, I sat with Michele and was able to pick her brain about career options post-graduation. She provided invaluable advice and offered herself as a resource in the future. She shared with me the importance of even “weak ties” and how they can provide career opportunities and encouraged me to continue building relationships as we continue throughout this program. I also fostered great relationships throughout our time at CRS. While these connections may not necessarily directly lead to a job, being able to build friendships with people across the world is a powerful personal skill. Being in the heart of the wet tropics region, we were able to get hands-on experience in species identification. David’s nature walk showed us not only which species were present, but how to use various aspects of the plants (i.e., trunk shape, bark, leaf configuration, etc.) to identify types of vegetation. Siggy gave a lecture about the geological origins of the wet tropics region and led us through a tour of the Atherton Tablelands where she helped us draw parallels to the roles and functions of the rainforest and how these are represented in a coral reef environment. Deborah gave a presentation on regenerative food systems. While I thoroughly enjoyed this week in the wet tropics, I think there could have been a larger emphasis put on how these terrestrial ecosystems affect marine environments.