Posted by Ted Feldpausch
14 April 2023As part of the NERC-funded Amazon Past Fire project, we coordinated a training session with university students in the secondary education teaching programme at the Federal Universidade de Acre, Brazil, about fire impacts, management, and sustainable forest use in Brazil.
Suely Oliveira, from the Biological Sciences course at the UFAC-Brazil campus, participated in extension actions in Cruzeiro do Sul, where she gave a lecture on burning in the Amazon and the work of young scientists for about 300 students in the 1st year of high school of the State School Prof. Flodorado Cabral and carried out training with Biological Sciences undergraduates linked to the pedagogical residency at the Floresta campus.
Suely’s participation took place within the scope of the extension project “Developing Local Capacity to Teach About Risks and Impacts of Forest Fires and Alternative Land Use in the Amazon”, by UFAC and the Univesity of Exeter (Prof. Ted Feldpausch). In the activities, she also shared experiences acquired in the 2nd Workshop: Exchange of Knowledge and Teaching on Burning in the Amazon.
“The project gives me the opportunity, as a young scientist, to share my learning and speak from young people to young people about the importance we have and need to assume in society, using our knowledge and our voice”, said Suely. “The exchange of knowledge strengthens and unites us in favor of a single objective, which is to plant the seed of a better world, through knowledge and education.”
Suely’s tutor in the project, biologist Yara Araújo Pereira de Paula, highlighted the importance of young scientists’ work in transmitting socio-environmental knowledge in the context of the fires in the Amazon. “Seeing Suely, a student recently trained by me, taking the extension and her acquired experience to other Amazonian regions is an additional motivator; we already have more than 9,000 young scientists distributed in the Brazilian, Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon.”
Prof Ted Feldpausch said, “Having Suely involved in communicating our research findings on fire impacts on forests in Amazonia to high school students and undergraduate students in training has been a great opportunity to make our research accessible and useful to the public and to help to be part of the solution to reduce wildfire and forest degradation in Amazonia.”
The extension project is coordinated by Profs Ted Feldpausch (University of Exeter, UK) and Simone Matias de Almeida Reis (CCBN/UFAC); it also has a partnership with the State University of Mato Grosso, the National Center for Monitoring and Natural Disaster Alerts, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Pantanal Network Project and the MAP-Fire Project.
https://www.ufac.br/site/noticias/2023/aluna-de-biologia-compartilha-atuacao-em-projeto-sobre-queimadas