Are you ready for Directed Research/A-Little-Real-World-Science?

I’m nearing 3 weeks of residence here at Haven Nature Campsite. In this amount of time we’ve travelled to Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara National Park, taken a wildlife management quiz, written another paper on human-wildlife conflict (this time focused on the Karatu district of Tanzania), and analyzed data on species-habitat preference. Yesterday, my academic courses of wildlife management, wildlife ecology, and environmental policy came to a close when we sat through our final round of exams. I really would have loved to spend the next day taking it easy and letting the illusion of freedom sink in, except instead we were thrown into statistic classes, writing classes, and classes on public speaking to get us ready for our directed research. I haven’t woken up later than 7:00 am in 2 months.

We were introduced to our topics:
DR Environmental Policy: Interviewing village residents and curio shop owners to understand how locals experience benefits from tourism. Students will use this knowledge to redesign tourism to benefit locals in order that they develop a positive viewpoint towards wildlife and become active in efforts of conservation.
DR Environmental Management: Interviewing tourists visiting Lake Manyara to understand their expectations when traveling to this region and how these compare to the realities they experienced. Students will use this information to adjust and improve tourism infrastructure.
DR Wildlife Ecology: Comparing the behavior of Olive baboons who live within the protected area of Lake Manyara to those who live on the edges of woodland and have more contact with human villagers. This includes differences in time deviation by the baboons, vigilance to humans, presence of disease, and vocalizations between the two baboon communities.
I put my name in for wildlife ecology and environmental policy, but I won’t find out which DR I will be working with until tomorrow night. DR is going to be a ton of work. All proposals and drafts will be graded and the paper often totals to +50 pages. There is a reasonable possibility that some of our work could be published under the overarching work of our professors, which would be really exciting.
The only other interesting thing to happen this week besides exams and DR was the presence of a very odd half moon. The moon last night, instead of being divided vertically, was divided horizontally. None of our professors had seen anything like it before and apparently it’s notoriously rare. The picture I included is one I found from the interenet posted from the sky over India, but it looks very similar to the one I saw here in Africa. The only information I was able to find about it was this:
(Take it with a grain of salt because I didn’t get it out of a scientific journal)

“ THE ORIENTATION OF THE CRESCENT MOON
The line that connects the two points of the crescent Moon is always almost at right angles to the path of the Moon along the sky. If the Moon goes up almost straight from the horizon (as it does when seen from the equator), then the crescent appears horizontal. If the Moon rises at a shallow angle (as seen far from the equator), then it moves as well along the horizon towards the west, and then the crescent is mostly vertical. The Moon rises almost vertically as seen from the equator because the orbit of the Moon stands approximately above the equator.
The shape and orientation of the Moon as seen from a spot south of the equator is similar to the shape and orientation of the Moon as seen from a place equally far north of the equator, and vice versa. For example, the Moon has the same orientation as seen from 52 degrees south latitude as from 52 degrees north latitude.”

Take a moment and try to appreciate environmental humor:

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