The GCA Collaborates with the World Wildlife Fund to Support Tropical Botany Studies

October 26, 2022

Projects funded in Amazonia, Costa Rica, Panama, Tanzania, and the Congo Basin

The Garden Club of America, in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, promotes the preservation of tropical forests through GCA Fellowships in Tropical Botany. In 2022, five fellowships were awarded for projects in Amazonia, Costa Rica, Panama, Tanzania, and the Congo Basin. 
 
2022 Fellow Evan Hockridge, Harvard University, recently completed his three-month field campaign in Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Congo. Seeking to understand the forest structure and biodiversity influences of baïs (wetlands), Hockridge’s research focused on the nutrient-rich forest clearings that concentrate activity of large animal species and provide habitat to flora that could not survive in the rest of the forest landscape.
 
“We observed patterns of animal, soil, and vegetative diversity that have never been described,” says Hockridge. “We identified over 300 distinct plant species, and we believe we saturated species area curves. We believe we have found and will be able to delineate new ecotones that are important to plant diversity.”
 
He continues, “It will likely take many months to fully process the abundance of data we have collected, but it was highly successful overall.” 
 

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