Mission2008:Saving the Galapagos 

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Las Iguanas Team 1: Cristina Stefanescu's webpage

OVERVIEW:

My name is Cristina Stefanescu and I am a member of the Las Iguanas team for MIT's Mission 2008 course. The goal of Mission 2008 is to develop the best possible strategy for management of the Galapagos Biopreserve through an international effort, to design a system of sensors to monitor the ecosystem processes, and to design an idealized village or tourist site. I focused my research on the island of Pinta, invasive species, and illegal fishing.

For the first two months, I was part of Las Iguanas Team 1. We were assigned to research the five most northern main islands of the archipelago: Darwin, Wolf, Marchena, Tower, and Pinta. In the third month, Las Iguanas divided according to the three objectives of the mission statement, and I joined the group designing environmental sensors and monitoring systems. I helped identify and research essential species to monitor and efficient methods of monitoring them.

Any questions? Just contact all the mission students here!

Also visit....
 Las Iguanas Team 1 Webpage
 Mission 2008 Webpage
 MIT Home

Goals

First Objective:

To develop a new preservation strategy for the Galapagos that builds on the current management plan for the Galapagos National Park and Galapagos Marine Reserve by designating the two as a "World Scientific Preserve" that would be managed by an international commission and funded by a multinational trust.

To design and deploy a network of environmental sensors to support a comprehensive program of ecosystem monitoring on the island and surrounding waters.

    To design an idealized "village" for permanent residents and visitors that would ensure the lowest possible human impact on island ecosystems.

My Journal
 

September 20-27  2004
 

Our team delegated each person to do general research on one of our team's five islands. I focused my research on the Galapagos island Pinta (Abington):

- third island in northern group of islands
- northwest trending submarine ridge"
- 850 m elevation, collapse pit
- 1 eruption in past century
- large white crystals of plagioclase=abingtonite  --lava different from that of Marchena and Genovesa
- used to have large tortoise population--now only one tortoise left, due to introduction of goats on island
 

September 27- October 4  2004
 

Our assignment for this past week was to write up a profile for each of our islands. I had some difficulty finding information on the island Pinta (especially information concerning flora and fauna). Here is my profile for Pinta:

Pinta profile
name: Pinta (Abington)
area: 60 sq. km.
major geographical characteristics: dormant volcano
geological: arid, sparsely vegetated
climate: Jan-Jun: 30 degrees C, warm, wet; Jul-Dec: 19 degrees C, cool, dry; heavy rainfall Feb-Apr
flora: lichens, Scalesia baurii ssp. hopkinsii (Asteraceae) and Opuntia galapageia var. galapageia (Cactaceae) were close to a complete collapse, stands of Bursera graveolens (Burseraceae)
fauna: goats Capra hircus (invasive, virtually eradicated), 1 saddle-backed tortoise
endangered species: saddle-backed tortoise
specific problems: cruise stop at island, vegetation recovery
 
 

Darwin Article:
Our TA's handed out the Charles Darwin foudnation Annual Report from 2003 in the last group meeting. This article provided a helpful overview of all the key invasive species on the Galapagos islands and a clear summary of the efforts made in the past year to eradicate these species from the islands. What I found particularly interesting was the point about having to strengthen communication with the local and international communities. I especially liked the idea about not only educating but also involving community members in the effort to protect the Galapagos biopreserve.

Our team has split up into different researching groups: the political group and the environmental sensors group. I'm researching for the environmental group--specifically invasive species. I have not found many invasive species specifically pertaining to our islands except for goats, which have almost completely been eradicated from Pinta, and fire ants on Genovesa. I've searched in many different databases and could hardly find any information on invasive species for the group 1 islands. Today, one of the TA's suggested I look at the sources from the Charles Darwin annual report for other routes of research. Hopefully, I'll have more luck finding sources of information that way.

Our team discussed how we are going to use sensors to monitor the environment without disturbing the area and without much human contact with flora and fauna. We decided the sensors will have to be wireless. Ideally, it would be great if we could monitor every specie, but with cost and human impact in mind, we probably would only be able to monitor endangered species and a few others at most.

I tried finding defining characteristics of native and invasive species for possible ways we could monitor them. I found that the queen fire ant secretes some chemical which the other ants are attracted to...perhaps we could use this fact to centralize all the ants and possibly remove them from the island....

Amanda found a great article on the Charles Darwin foundation website. It seems to have a pretty comprehensive overview of Galapagos' history and problems it has right now, although I have not read much of it yet.

http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/aaas00009601.html

I found a helpful article on the Charles Darwin foundation webpage that outlined all the invasive insects on all the Galapagos Islands and how each one negatively impacts the environment.

http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/n6000129903.html

This article talked about the little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata), the tropical fire ant (Solenopsis geminata), wasps (Polistes versicolor and Brachygastra lecheguana), the black fly (Simulium bipunctatum), and the cottony cusion scale (Icerya purchasi).

One of the TA's suggested I research information about invasive species in general--what they are, why they are important, how they come about, what are some methods to eradicate them? I will pursue this direction for next time. I am also going to help Scott out with researching illegal fishing and fishing in general in the Galapagos. Some questions I'm going to try to investigate are: how is fishing conducted? what are the problems? how is illegal fishing being delt with so far? how could it be monitored more? what are the laws of commercial fishing? how can the environment be protected enough while there is commercial fishing taking place?
 

October 25- November 1  2004
 

Our team webpage was due today so for the past week we have been working on finishing it. Since last meeting, we have been finishing up our research and trying to summarize our information into cohesive paragraphs. We spent this past weekend working on finalizing the website and fixing any little glitches we found on our webpage. I worked on writing up my summary for my focused research on invasive species and my brief research on fishing in the Galapagos.

Summary of invasive species research:

 Invasive species are species that are non-native to the ecosystem under consideration and whose presence causes environmental or economic harm. Plants, animals and other organisms can all be invasive species. On the Galapagos Islands, there are many invasive species present that were intentionally and non-intentionally introduced to the islands. The effort against invasive species has two main components: preventing the introduction and spreading of alien species, and controlling and eliminating current invasive species. Common methods for controlling and eliminating present invasive species include extensive monitoring of the islands and introduction of controlling agents such as another non-harmful specie. For Team 1’s group of islands, there are a few major invasive species that should be focused on. They are the little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata), the tropical fire ant (Solenopsis geminata), and the wasp (Polistes versicolor and Brachygastra lecheguana).

The little fire ant is considered one of the most aggressive introduced species on the islands. Out of our team’s islands, the little fire ant is present on Marchena. It spreads via plants and soil. According to the last Darwin report, there has been a considerable drop in scorpion, spider, and native ant specie populations within areas infested by the little fire ant. Methods used so far to control the little fire ant are non-selective ant poisons, clearing of vegetation, and fire. On small islands such as Marchena, the best solution for control seems to be chemical control.

The tropical fire ant is found throughout the islands and spreads through active flight of the winged females. This specie is believed to have an impact on several invertebrates and the nesting behavior of tortoises and land iguanas. One possible way of controlling this alien specie is using the fact that the fire ants are attracted to venom gland extracts of the queen ants to attract and kill off the fire ants.

The wasp is another highly agressive invasive specie which is capable of producing a painful sting in people, it feeds on the larva of Lepidoptera and other integral insects integral to the diets of several reptiles and birds. Its means of dispersal is mainly active flight and on tourist and cargo ships. During months of heavy rainfall, the wasp population is curbed but grows again during dry season.
 

Summary of Fishing on the islands-brief research:

Fishing has been one of the primary economic activities on the Galapagos islands for the past century and has been kept mostly artisanal. There are presently three main types of fishing taking place in the islands. The first are international fishing vessels which fish in the Galapagos pellagic region illegally. They use fairly advanced technology (long-lining, seines) to greatly increase their catch. The second form of fishing is legal fishing boats, either Ecuadorian ships or international ships with Ecuadorian permission or an Ecuadorian flag. Although these boats legally have the rights to fish in the Galapagos islands, their total compliance with the rules and regulations set out by the Ecuadorian government is questionable. The maximum catch aloted to fisherman is often exceeded. The third form of fishing is that of local fisherman, often funded by outside parties. Funded by Asian markets and capital from these regions, for example, local traditional fisherman receive loans or money for equipment and services.

A common occurence in the fishing world in Ecuador is the rapid development of a new export fishery ultimately driven to extinction within a short period of time (2-3 years) because of overfishing. Consequently, the companys turn to the Galapagos to fish.
 
 

Sources:
http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/ar00040039.html
http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/aaas00009601.html
Charles Darwin Annual Report 2003
http://www.law.emory.edu/PI/GALAPAGOS/Biodiversity.htm
http://www.darwinfoundation.org/articles/n6000129903.html
Hokkanen, Heikki. Biological Control. Nature Publishing Group, 2004.
http://wos02.isiknowledge.com/CIW.cgi :
                       Effects of the Jessica Oil spill on artisanal fisheries in the Galapagos. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2003.
                        Ruttenberg, BI. Effects of artisanal fishing on marine communities in the Galapagos Islands.
                                    Conservation Biology 15, Dec 2001.
                        Carreiro-Silva, M, McClanahan TR. Echinoid bioerosion and herbivory on Kenyan coral reefs: the role
                                    of protection from fishing. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Jul 30 2001.
 

Now that each team has put up their finalized webpages, Las Iguanas got together and decided to break up by the three objectives of the mission. Since I worked mostly on native and invasive species as well as some fishing, I joined the biosensor group working on objective 2. I wasn't quite sure which direction to go in my research this week so I did not get much done.

 
Our group is working on compiling a list of all species on the islands as well as deciding which ones to monitor since we can't monitor them all. We talked about monitoring keystone species because they would be most indicative of how the rest of the populations are doing and if there is something drastically different going on in the environment. We also discussed how to monitor the birds since they fly around and are hard to keep tabs on. Someone proposed the idea of having some sort of machine or person monitor the nesting sites. We are also trying to research different types of biosensors which is difficult because we are still not sure which species we want to monitor.

 I researched some marine species that might be important to monitor: sea lions, turtles, tortoises, blue-footed boobies. These species are endangered so it is a good idea to monitor them. I thought about how to monitor the marine species which is very difficult because the water conditions can change a lot and are so unpredictable--plus the species can roam over an area too large to monitor. As some TA's pointed out, another aspect of our objective our group really needs to define soon is how exactly do you interprate the data from whatever monitors or sensors we have. ex: exactly what amount of salinity is too high or too low, and what is a safe or normal range of water salinity?

Next week is our final presentation, so our team has been meeting outside of class a lot. We have been working more on creating a baseline of our monitoring system and an algorithm for how to interprate the data. This week we have basically been synthesizing everyone's research, work, and ideas. This past week was Thanksgiving break, so I didn't get that much mission work done. We are still working on the baseline and algorithm. We have compiled a whole list of flora and fauna on the islands and now are working out the last details of the biosensors to put up on the Las Iguanas website.

top of journal

Some Useful links
 
 

 The Charles Darwin Foundation

~provides a strong cohesive summary of the current problems in the Galapagos as well as complete information on general facts of the environment (invasive species, etc)

 Galapagos National Park

 Galapagos Conservation Trust

 Biodiversity Conservation and Human Impacts

~great article about current conservation efforts, the central problems in the Galapagos, and comprehensive history of fishing in the area