Climate Change & Disappearing Glaciers,  Daily Life in Lima

Blogging on Fieldwork in Peru: Melting glaciers, camera-shy bears and nasty stomach viruses

The rarely seen Andean bear
The rarely seen Andean bear, whom biologists have tracking in Peru

Excuse the radio silence. I’ve been holed up writing grant applications to fund an expedition that El Fotografo and I want to do this year in the dept. of Cusco. Keep your fingers crossed.

Expeditions are not the only projects in Peru that are eligible for funding. Research projects undertaken by investigators in the “hard” and social sciences, as well as the humanities, also attract seed money and, in some cases, hefty grants that can sustain grantees abroad for up to a year or more. A substantial number of these grantees come from the United States, whose major grant-giving entities include the U.S. government (National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health), corporations and nonprofit foundations.

Foreign researchers and scholars tend to be extremely busy while they’re in Peru, but a few manage to blog from the field or from Internet cafes, mainly for the benefit of colleagues and family back home. These blog entries offer intriguing glimpses into what it’s like to pursue finite goals in a developing country rich with varied eco-systems, indigenous languages and partially excavated ruins, as well as maddeningly slow bureaucracies, hazardous roads and dubious sanitation standards.

I first stumbled onto Crampons and Cornfields half a year ago, when I was trolling for news about Peru’s glaciers. Subtitled “Adventures of an environmental geochemist,” the blog is authored by newly minted Ph.D. Sarah Fortner, who describes four years of fieldwork in such far-flung places as McMurdo, Antarctica, Huaraz, Peru, and Yanamarey Glacier, contrasted with her coursework in the “cornfields” of Ohio State University. (Sarah’s dissertation committee included the eminent climatologists Lonnie Thompson and Bryan Mark, who have spent years documenting glacier recession in southern Peru.)

A view from the field, from Crampons & Cornfields

Sarah writes about a friend discovering that she’s had a crag named after her in Victoria Island; coping with intestinal snafoos while doing fieldwork, and being overcome with sadness and rage witnessing environmental contamination by mining operations in Peru. (And you thought scientists cared only about collecting data.)

Here’s a notewothy entry from June 2008 (A Day for No Pictures), when she reflects on the prior day’s research sampling water from a toxic river below Yanamarey Glacier:

I am thinking of the stinging frothy red water we sampled from a llaves pile (mine tailings) before it entered the river. Most devastating, the barren dust-field stretched out in front of it was marked by children’s footprints. A flock of uniformed kids dutifully bounced to school across this parched poisonous land. The source of a pervasive local cough is likely the pumping of this flour into the air.

This day was a mix of emotions with the kids burned into my head sharply contrasting with images from the Andean headwaters we sampled earlier. Before the alpine glare of the afternoon, golden grasses spanned out across the broad flat valley towered by glistening rise of the ice covered Cordillera Blanca. I am humbled by both grandeur and devastation.

A moving entry. I wish Sarah the best on her joint application to study the effects of receding glacier meltoff on water quality in Peru.

The San Diego Zoo is funding a large-scale research effort on Andean bears in Peru, and their collaborative blog includes a several posts from the field from scientist Russ Van Horn.

 While in Peru, Russ tracked the elusive Andean bear in a cloud forest in Quince Mil. It’s not easy catching one of these creatures on camera, as Russ’s posts detail. What the scientist did gather is evidence of Andean bears destroying local farmers’ maize crops, devastation that’s making the campesinos pretty angry.

Russ returned to San Diego in December 2008 and may return to Peru after the rainy season ends. I hope that when he returns the Andean bears decide that it’s time to face the cameras.

Med student Catherine Hooper blogs on her experiences as a Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholar (sponsored by the National Institutes of Health) at Peru’s John Hopkins outpost.

On Thursday she received the good news that after six months of effort, her study to investigate the causes of pulmonary diseases was finally approved:

Man, a whole lot more goes into getting things like this ready than I had ever imagined. But man [I] have a learned a lot along the way.

Back in August ’08. Catherine gave this preliminary outline of her project: 

I’ll be working on evaluating the prevalence of pulmonary disease and lung cancer and the risk factors that lead to these diseases. I am living in Lima for the majority of my time here but my work will be all over Peru. Pretty much wherever there is childhood asthma, Adult COPD, or lung cancer caused by indoor and outdoor pollution, well, I’ll be there!

Sounds like a project that could encompass Lima and a host of mining towns like La Oroya. Let’s hope that Catherine and her assistants protect their own lungs while in the field.

The Fulbright Commission in the U.S. sends a good-sized contingent of scholars to Peru each year, and an effort is underway to encourage research in the provinces. Many of the Peru-based scholars launch blogs upon arriving in Peru and post intermittently on their forays into history, business practices and climate change.

Current Fulbright Scholar blogs include:

Corriendo la Liebre: My Year of Fulbright Research in Peru — by Allison Caine

Good Luck Chuck

Hola Peru! — a visually oriented blog by Esther Lee, who’s studying textile design in Cusco

I’ll end with Esther’s musing from Oct. 11, 2008, written after she visited communities in the Urubamba Valley:

This past weekend, I did a trip with Mario to a few villages, about 1-2 hours by car, to meet with and explore sites for collaboration with weavers. It was tiring but quite the adventure! We traveled to three different villages, along with about 30 local farmers and weavers, who regularly travel on the weekends to the village markets to sell their produce. The elderly, the young couples, the kids, Mario and I were crammed into the open-top produce truck, along with piles of potatoes, greens, and barrels of chicha, which is a fermented corn beer. It was awesome…you come visit me, we travel like the locals 🙂

…It’s been interesting to hear the sentiments of the local villagers on the influx of foreign aid, through non-profits and ngo’s. Hearing and seeing first-hand the mixed results of well-intended efforts of foreigners is definitely humbling as I go about also looking for opportunities to offer my assistance. Even though there may not be adequate plumbing, drafty houses and kids with lots of runny noses, in some communities I got the sense that there is peace. I’m looking forward to the extended time I have here, as I feel it’s needed to really learn and understand the needs of each community.

 Readers, do you know any interesting fieldwork blogs from Peru-based scholars? Share your links below.

links:

Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars Support Center: http://www.aamc.org/students/medstudents/overseasfellowship/

Fulbright Scholar Program in Peru: http://www.fulbrightperu.info/english/beca_usa_scholar.htm

I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.

2 Comments

  • Sarah Fortner

    Thanks for referring people to my blog! I really enjoyed looking through yours and will keep it on my reading list! All the best from Byrd Polar!

    Sarah

  • Barb

    Great to hear from you, Sarah. Glad to tip off readers to your fascinating real-world blog. I was intrigued to see the links on Crampons & Cornfields to blogs of friends/colleagues who are blogging from field stations at the Poles. What an incredible use of technology.

    Hats off to you and your colleagues who brave such harsh conditions to retrieve relevant data. It inspires me when I’m trekking and camping in the Andes.

    Keep up the great work at Byrd. 🙂