{"id":3867,"date":"2015-07-03T01:15:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T01:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auip.com\/?p=3867"},"modified":"2015-07-03T01:19:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T01:19:23","slug":"rainforest-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/rainforest-adventures\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Perspective: Rainforest Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virginia Reid, the <\/i>Hokies Abroad<\/i><\/a> <\/i>service-learning in New Zealand and North Queensland<\/i><\/a> 2015 student blogger, writes: <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo Credit: AC Photography<\/p><\/div>\n

We have finally arrived in Australia’s Daintree Rainforest and had the pleasure of meeting our field\u00a0guide, Paul O’Dowd<\/a>, who we all agree knows everything about anything! Paul led us on rainforest tours, both during the day and at night, enabling us to observe\u00a0this diverse and dense ecosystem from a variety of\u00a0perspectives. Some of us were lucky enough to even sneak a peek at a crocodile<\/a>!<\/p>\n

We conquered\u00a0our fears of the dark and spiders on our night walk, as Paul asked us\u00a0turn out our flashlights as we continued through the moonlit rainforest. This allowed us to experience the peacefulness of the forest and observe sleeping birds, huntsman spiders<\/a>, peppermint stick\u00a0bugs<\/a>, and various snakes.\u00a0We learned\u00a0that the rainforest is, in fact very rainy, but that did not stop us from exploring Cape Tribulation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_2015-06-16-20-47-49\"<\/a>In between working ever so studiously on our upcoming essays on Australian indigenous culture, we used our free day to go on\u00a0various adventures\u00a0including zip-lining<\/a>, kayaking<\/a>, and horseback riding<\/a>. Yet, most of us never expected to experience a view quite like the one at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory<\/a>. This scientific research site examines the relationship between tropical rainforests and climate change, and has a crane that offers a 360\u00b0 view above the rainforest canopy. We assisted the director of the site with data collection of trees planted by Virginia Tech<\/a> students six years ago, to monitor tree\u00a0health and growth rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0On our final morning in Cape Tribulation, we took turns teaching each other concepts from our readings on environmental conservation. We\u00a0also discussed the critical interrelationship between the rainforest, the mangroves, and the Great Barrier Reef. This leads directly to our next stop: The Great Barrier Reef<\/a>. We can hardly wait!<\/p>\n

\"20150613_071601\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DCIM100GOPROGOPR2418.\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virginia Reid, the Hokies Abroad service-learning in New Zealand and North Queensland 2015 student blogger, writes: \u00a0 We have finally arrived in Australia’s Daintree Rainforest and had the pleasure of meeting our field\u00a0guide, Paul O’Dowd, who we all agree knows everything about anything! Paul led us on rainforest tours, both during the day and at night, enabling us to observe\u00a0this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,23,19,16,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-15-student-blogs","category-australia-north-queensland","category-field-notes","category-postcard","category-student-perspective"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3867"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3884,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions\/3884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}