My name is Ruth TCHANA WANDJI, I am from Cameroon, a country located in Central Africa and often called “Africa in miniature”. Concerning my academical background, I schooled both in Cameroon and France, respectively. I had an enriching background in the field of environmental sciences – climate change, in Cameroon and specialised in biodiversity, ecology, and evolution in France. I graduated my master’s degree (MSc) from AgroParisTech-University of Montpellier II. During my MSc program, I had the opportunity to focus more on tropical and temperate plant species when working at INRA-UMR BIOGECO Bordeaux – Kew Gardens London, and CIRAD French Guiana. Now, thanks to the FutureArctic project, adding Arctic / Sub-Arctic plant species to the studied species list is awesome.
In the project, I am working on plant phenology and plant stress evolution – ESR 7. Hosted by the Agricultural University of Iceland (LBHI), I will be focusing on unmanaged sub-Arctic grasslands growth-processes and plant stresses. This research will consider the evolution of these parameters in a globally changing warmer world affecting ecosystems in different ways. Also, the monitoring of the annual variation of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) with other vegetation indices on sub-Arctic grassland communities will be explored. Moreover, this research will find out possible links between ground-based measurements and hyperspectral remote-sensed measurements. Last but not the least, getting to know how environmental stress factors affect the unmanaged sub-Arctic grasslands will be a plus to the study.
Unfortunately, due to t
he CoVID-19 situation, I am still stuck in France for now. However, I had the opportunity to visit Iceland and the ForHot site before the pandemic outbreak alongside with all its restrictions. Optimistically, I can only hope the CoVID-19 issues get better soon, so I can go on with everything. Sharing and interacting with the FutureArctic team is a step to building a great network and collaboration. I am therefore looking forward to it.
I hereby invite you to stay in touch with my research via Twitter.
“Research is a scientific activity dedicated to discovering what makes grass green”
– Russell Baker-