Volunteering

12/1/24 - First official in-person meeting with Dr. Coffman

I happened to meet Dr. Coffman, senior lecturer of Environmental Studies from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Geography Department last year during the annual NUS Open House, where she was kind to offer her phone number to us in case we ever wanted to contact her with questions about NUS/Environmental Studies/Ecology. I've found myself increasingly interested in her work with the Tropical Restoration Ecology (TRE) Lab, where they conduct field work in various sites in Southeast Asia including the Singapore Botanic Gardens. She invited me to sit down and chat about my interests in ecology and how I could work with her!

She was interested to hear about the individual research in Ecology I was already doing by myself, and suggested her favorite tools she uses in identification, for example iNaturalist and Canopeo.  We also talked at length about how I found myself interested in this academic area, and my general educational background. She also encouraged me to walk around the campus with her as she ran some errands, so we visited the central library, where I stepped into their 360 VR room and chatted with some of her faculty friends who work for undergraduate research. We also stopped at the Geography Department, where their lab director took me around and explained to me the uses of their various pieces of lab equipment.

She has expressed interest in having me as a volunteer for the TRE Lab's field work and data collection at Singapore Botanic Gardens, and a more in-depth training and work with her or faculty/NUS students during the summer of this year. I'm very excited to work with her and learn more about an academic subject I'm passionate about :)

I'm really thankful that Dr. Coffman was willing to take time out of her busy schedule to chat with me today, and I learned quite a bit about myself and her work. Looking forward to our next conversation and future field work together!

20/4/24 - Ecology field skills training with the NUS Geography Department

In between two weeks of internal exams at school, I used a Saturday to attend the NUS Geography Department's Ecology Field Skills Training day! I've been looking forward to this for a while now, and I was really looking forward to learning more about ecological surveying and getting my hands dirty.

We were quite a big group-- around 20-30 people! As expected, most students were Dr. Coffman's students studying for their bachelor's in Environmental Studies, many of which were first or second-year students who were looking to gain some field experience before their field trip to Sabah. There were also some older undergraduate students who had much more expertise and experience with fieldwork to help us, as many of them had already done internships related to ecological field surveying. I happened to be the only highschool student, however some other attendees were students at other universities in Singapore or NUS students with majors completely unrelated to BES, which was cool. We were also joined by some of Dr. Coffman's friends from previous universities who had dropped by Singapore while on holiday, as well as the NUS BES teaching assistant. 

We started with an introduction to our field sites, some of which were in the Learning Forest portion of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (SBG). This section is a relatively new addition to SBG, which is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It actually used to be completely paved! It is largely advertised as being a restored wetland, however there are some caveats to this: the large ponds and lakes in the Learning Forest are not very accurate to the original freshwater ecosystems of Singapore, which mostly consisted of heavily wooded areas with small streams running through them. But then again, SBG is more commonly known as a recreational and tourist location in Singapore, so there might be a conflict of interest between completely accurate wildlife restoration and making sure enough people still visit. 

We were given a booklet detailing all the different field surveying techniques and equipment, and then got the chance to use the equipment and try surveying ourselves! I didn't manage to try using every single piece of equipment as the group was bigger than the teaching team had expected, but I still got to try a lot of surveying methods:

• laying out transects and survey grids using transect tape

• canopy cover using a densitometer

• herbaceous cover using a quadrat and the Canopeo app (which, despite its name, doesn't work well for canopy cover)

• soil characterization using the Munsell color chart and special shovel

• diameter at breast height/1.3m (DBH) of trees using special DBH measuring tape

• soil moisture using soil moisture meter

(I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share the photos I took, as they might be private information belonging to NUS)

There really are so many variables that need to be considered when doing work out in the field, as well as a lot of equipment that needs to be carried. It's definitely worth it though, even though it might be more difficult or physically taxing than lab work!

After we wrapped up the training, we ate lunch together, during which I chatted with NUS students about their reasons behind going to NUS for university, why they chose their majors, their academic and extracurricular interests, etc. I also introduced myself to Dr. Coffman's two summer interns, who I will be volunteering under during my summer holidays.

Today was a great introduction to a bunch of different surveying techniques used in fieldwork, and I'm looking forward to volunteering under the SBG research project during the summer :)

Summer 2024 - Ecological surveying and statistics with NUS TRE Lab