The Group 4 project, also known as the DP Collaborative Science Trip is compulsory in the IB program. This trip heavily encourages students to appreciate the environmental, social and ethical implications of science. As IB mentions, it is collaborative and interdisciplinary and provides an opportunity for students to explore scientific solutions to global questions. Each year DP1 students are involved in a different Group 4 Project trip, where we were lucky enough to be granted the opportunity to go to the Sinharaja Rainforest or what I’d like to call the Leech Forest.
This 3-day trip was initiated on December 11th at 8:30 as we got to our assigned buses. The trip was divided into 4 groups: physics, chemistry, biology and ESS. Even though I am doing both physics and chemistry, I was put in the physics group. However, as physics was a difficult science to involve in fieldwork in a rainforest, we focused more on other sciences. Chemistry, Biology and Physics students stayed in Blue Magpie Lodge, while the ESS students stayed right in the middle of the forest, Martin’s Lodge. Fieldwork being a new experience, I was excited for what’s yet to come. On the first day, we got an introduction to what the fieldwork would be, where we were placed into groups and I was placed with Ben, Nayara, Mali and Aadhya. The highlight of the day probably was learning to create quadrats (a frame used to isolate an area to continue fieldwork), where within that perimeter we will be analysing the different types of species. Not knowing what fieldwork exactly was, we were guided by our teachers, the two professors who helped us and the guides. We learnt that this particular fieldwork consists of counting species inside a quadrat, measuring the height and girth of plants, naming the plants (with the help of tour guides) and recording the data, which will later be updated in global databases. The first day was a trial run to preserve momentum for the next day so we could start the work right away.
Since we spent the first day understanding the process of fieldwork, the second day we got into actual work. To get to the perimeter we had to go on a small hike, except I had to carry a box full of equipment in both my hands. That wasn’t the bad part, the bad part was not being able to remove the leeches that were climbing up my legs. The fieldwork consisted of measuring the slope of our plot, pH levels of the soil, number of plants, size of the plants, and amount of canopy cover. Due to heavy rain, we had to stop our data collection at trial 2 to prevent the equipment from getting wet. Once we were done with data collection, we were able to log our data into databases by handing out the data to the guides who were there with us. With this data, they can monitor and keep track of the growth of the forest. We got back to Blue Magpie Lodge quite early due to the rain and had lunch. Most of us fell asleep right after since we were all tired.
We thought day 3 would be relaxing as we were told that we were going back after a “short” hike. This yet so-called short hike was almost an hour hike through the steep forest. But I should say the wind at the top, and getting service after not having service for 3 days was definitely worth it. Sadly, we only spent about 30 minutes at the top. Surprisingly, going down only took about 30 minutes, maybe because I was told by a friend (Ahem Jed**) that we were having pizza when we were back at the lodge. Ya no, there was no pizza at the lodge. After a quick lunch and a shower, we were on the buses to come back to Colombo. The only interesting part of the bus ride back home was going through a flooded road at one point.
