Category: travel (Page 1 of 3)

So far away

2024-10-23 / Luis

During the last two weeks I have been travelling in Chile, talking and listening (a lot) about forestry in general, but also politics, given that local/regional elections are happening this weekend.

I rarely show up in photos in my posts (unlike marketing people 😛) but today is an exception. My first job after university was at the Chilean Tree Improvement Cooperative in Valdivia, Southern Chile. Thirty one (!) years later I am attending the IX Congress of the Chilean Society of Forest Sciences in Valdivia. Meeting old friends and colleagues and enjoying watching the work presented by the new crop of researchers and postgrad students.

Sometimes people ask me “Why do you go to that congress?” meaning instead of going to the US or Europe. Weeeelll, one part is that many of the species and type of forests are similar between Chile and New Zealand. Another reason is that the Congress includes a very broad set of topics (ecology, silviculture, wood science, etc). And I get to see family and friends. Finally, I enjoy going to “picadas” cheap restaurants that sell traditional foods. I don’t care about fancy restaurants selling food that you can buy anywhere else in the world, but going to a picada, I’m in!

Yours truly looking like a tourist in Valdivia.

Porotos con riendas in a picada in Freire.

9,000 km to the East

2024-10-10 / Luis

The end (of the semester) is nigh, involving the typical drama of assignments, grades, etc. On top of that, Duncan McLean (one of our PhD students) successfully defended his thesis, which now means including a few suggested changes so he can be formally called Dr McLean. And working with Juan Carlos Valverde (a visiting PhD student from Universidad de Concepción), plus preparing a presentation for the IX Chilean Congress of Forest Sciences, this October in Valdivia, which happens to be roughly 9,000 km to the East.

The presentation introduces a paper that we are writing with my colleague Clemens Altaner, looking at the genetic control of pith-to-bark stiffness trajectories.

Increment cores in front of acoustic scanner.

Long-term and longer-term

2023-12-15 / Luis

Last Tuesday I had a very interesting visit (coordinated by Dr Verónica Emhart) and discussion with the breeding team at CMPC in Los Ángeles, southern Chile. This is part of a trip visiting organisations in Chile during December and January*.

I had offered to give a talk about our work breeding for solid wood products in pine and eucalypts at the School of Forestry, University of Canterbury. I pointed out to the audience that this type of talks to me are really an excuse to have a conversation, and we did have hours and hours chatting with plenty of questions going both ways!

Breeding is a long-term endeavour, that goes well-beyond the quarterly-reporting demands in companies. So I was happy to see in the conversation that there was plenty of long-term thinking in the breeding programme.

At the same time, there is “longer-term thinking”. I remember visiting CMPC as a young forester 30 years ago and most work at that time was in radiata pine. Business and climate change have meant a transition from pine to eucalypts, first to E. globulus then to E nitens and now increasingly the E nitens x globulus hybrid. This type of change stresses resources in a breeding programme, but it also creates interesting opportunities for refining one’s understanding of site variability and the link between tree characteristics and end-product requirements.

At the end we run out of time, but I hope I can visit them again soon and continue the conversation.

*Part of an Erskine programme, where the University of Canterbury gives me the opportunity to travel to improve understanding that contributes to my teaching.

PS. In the micropropagation lab they have beautiful copihues as gifts. Unfortunately, I have the strong suspicion that this would not pass biosecurity restrictions on arrival to NZ.

2016-11-01 / Luis

Butterfly in Otago Museum (Dunedin, NZ. Photo: Luis). — Butterfly in Otago Museum, Dunedin, NZ.

Early morning light stripes on motel corridor walls

A tad of novelty and adventure

2015-01-30 / Luis

Traveling for swimming competition—kiddo competing while I officiate—and staying in a motel. There is some novelty and adventure for a kid in jumping in a car and appearing in a slightly different landscape a few hours later. That sense of adventure has often been lost or drowned in adults, probably the product of too much business travel to (almost) pointless meetings. I should say brief adventure, as tonight will be early bed as Saturday starts at 7:30am sharp on the pool deck.

Driving down Canterbury on a Friday evening is an easy and unexciting drive: flat, straight roads with the odd narrow bridge and no much traffic. Farmland, milk trucks, some crops here and irrigators over there. The clouds are always impressive though. This time they look mildly menacing, grey but well defined, with a hint of yellow and ocre nearing the end of the day.