Field Notes: Nature Conservation Foundation

Day 3

Some days in the field remind you that a forest isn’t just an ecosystem. It’s a map of memory, each tree, a node in a network of dispersal, collapse, regeneration, and resilience. Day 3 took us deeper into this network. We walked into a benchmark rainforest patch, studied the mechanics of seed dispersal, tracked treefall patterns, and understood how structure speaks of stability. These benchmark sites are more than just reference points, they’re living baselines, quietly shaping how restoration is assessed and imagined.

Binoculars in hand, the team waited to catch sight of a hornbill taking flight.

The Mechanics of Dispersal: Hornbills, Bats, and Mother Trees

Dispersal in the forest is a team effort. Hornbills, bats, squirrels, insects, each one plays a role. Some trees, like the wild nutmeg, produce massive seeds wrapped in striking red pulp (mace). These seeds are too hefty for smaller pollinators. Only the Malabar Hornbills, and occasionally the imperial pigeons can really get them going. They swallow the fruit whole, digest the pulp, and drop the seed elsewhere, giving it a chance to regenerate a patch of the forest.

Tracing the breakfast party through the trail of half-eaten fruit.

Bats prefer a different method. They munch on fruits like Ficus, spit out the seeds at feeding stations, and create dense seed piles called bat middens. These middens often serve as micro-nurseries. But even bats avoid invasive fruits like lantana.

The roadsides, too, become convenient seed collection zones. Seeds are collected, weighed, and measured at the nursery.

But the questions are just beginning: Where did these seeds come from? Which "mother trees" do they trace back to?

The goal is to collect from many individuals to ensure high genetic diversity, but the data on whether seeds from older trees or benchmark sites are better is still inconclusive. We know this for teak. But for most rainforest species? Not yet.

Journey to the Benchmark Site

The walk into the rainforest benchmark site is its own kind of time travel. These are places protected since the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, covering patches from tens of hectares to thousands of square kilometers.

On the left side of the road stretches the Annamalai Tiger Reserve, a protected rainforest.

As you walk deeper, the noise softens, the air cools and suddenly you're in a different world. Giant trees rise like sentinels, buttress roots splaying out at their feet. The canopy knits together above your head so tightly that if you look up, you can barely spot a scrap of sky. 

We noticed a tree fall, a big one.

It reminds me that even in a stable forest, change is always brewing. Dr. T R Shankar Raman (Scientist, NCF) tells us that Tree-fall dynamics, how they fall, what replaces them, is an entire area of study in these forests. 

Once inside the benchmark plot, the difference is obvious. It's dense, layered and alive. The canopy overhead is almost completely closed, 95% or more. You can spot the big trees and actually count them. Shankar tells us often the biomass in these trees outweighs the number of small trees when it comes to ecosystem resilience. Most of the biomass, it turns out, sits in the trunk, which is why girth is gold as far as tree phenology metrics go. 

But more than numbers, it's the feel of the place.

The big trees aren't just there, they're connected. You see creepers like cane winding through them, growing undisturbed and you see life, a nuthatch, a giant squirrel, even a mongoose peeking through. Every inch feels storied. 

What Structure Reveals

A mature forest carries its story in its architecture. When you see a mix of seedlings, saplings, poles, and elders, it’s a forest in balance. When big trees stand alone, spaced far apart, something is off.

In benchmark areas, trees are close, canopies touch, and light rarely filters through. That darkness matters. Closed canopies suppress invasives like lantana, a persistent indicator of disturbance. Lionines and creepers show up in moderately disturbed sites, but a fully intact forest holds a different mix entirely.

There’s a quiet kind of wisdom that builds from watching a site for decades.

Benchmark forests give us a frame of reference. They don’t just tell us what we’ve lost, they remind us what’s possible, if we’re willing to pay attention.

These forests aren’t just tree collections. They’re entangled systems, where dispersal, treefall, species behavior, and even weather patterns are all part of the same rhythm.

To understand them, we need tools that know how to watch, and wait.

Back at the Office: Where Forests Meet the Frontend

Post-lunch, the canopy gave way to a whiteboard. The conversation turned to systems, how to record change without losing context, and how to structure tools that respond to the forest’s tempo.

We walked the NCF team through the photo-monitoring platform prototype, using their own restoration data, which we had batch-ingested the previous night. The Excel they had shared was structured but fragmented. Our goal was to join it and demonstrate how layered datasets, if properly linked, could tell a much more coherent story about restoration.

The platform allows field teams to:

• Drag-and-drop map columns across sheets to establish connections

• Use Plot ID as a unique key to stitch data together

• View GPS-tagged plots on a map and draw polygons around sites

• Run time-series queries, spanning from 2018 to the most recent field visit

What this means

In doing so, we were doing more than demo-ing a technical feature, we were surfacing the possibility of narrative. Of restoration being read not as isolated snapshots in Excel, but as a coherent, layered story stitched together by time, place, and intent. The ghost image in March becomes a point of return, each subsequent photo layering growth, change, and complexity. This approach invited the team to see data not just as a record, but as a lens, a way to track the pulse of the landscape over years, and make decisions rooted in both memory and evidence.

What the Forest Taught the Platform to Become

In the field, photo points are found using memory and physical markers like painted stones. It's a system born of necessity. We spoke about adding subtle nudges within the app: on-screen alignment aids, GPS-based feedback, even bearing indicators to help field teams know they’re at the right spot.

To help standardize image framing, we discussed showing a grid overlay on the camera interface, allowing the user to visually divide the frame into thirds and align ground, foliage, and sky consistently. Getting the composition right matters more than getting it perfect. What the team needed wasn’t a professional camera, but a way to ensure consistency over 20 years of monitoring. Phones, then, became the default tool, not for their technical superiority, but for their accessibility and ease in the field.

We also explored the idea of building a repeatable, field-ready pipeline: reach the site, take a photo, respond to a short survey, and upload the data back at base. Simplicity and durability were key, controls should stay out of the way, and the app should gently remind users without overwhelming them.

Examining field tested photos and evaluating various aspect ratios that will capture the sky, foliage and ground equally.

From Monitoring to Meaning: Toward an Integrated System

The conversation expanded.

What if the platform didn’t just handle photos? What if it could host all types of restoration data in one place: images, surveys, biodiversity records, weather information, and plot-level notes?

We discussed integrating multiple data layers, from platforms like GBIF, eBird, SeasonWatch, and even local weather systems. Field teams could upload shapefiles for each site instead of manually tracing boundaries. And from that, the system could generate reports: which species are present, what’s changed over the years, which plots are thriving, and which are lagging.

This isn’t hypothetical.

NCF currently manages 70 forest fragments, but only 20–30 have detailed biodiversity data. A system like this could help close that gap, allowing quick comparisons, identifying patterns, and making the invisible visible.

It would be just as useful for field teams as for conservation planners and donors. The dream isn’t a dashboard. It’s a living archive, a place where ecological memory is stored and continuously updated.

Designing with People in Mind

K. Srinivasan (Srini), a Senior Project Manager at NCF, anchors the entire operation. He works closely with project assistants who manage ground-level logistics and safety, while research assistants focus on data interpretation and analysis.

Each of them brings a different lens to the work, and the tech needs to respond to all three. So we asked: how do we make it flexible enough for Srini’s planning, lightweight enough for the assistants trekking through the forest, and rigorous enough for researchers asking complex questions?

The answers are unfolding, but the commitment is clear: co-design, test in real contexts, and keep the feedback loop alive.

What’s Next

New photo-monitoring stations and second round of field-testing are planned between August and September 2025, though full implementation will likely begin next year. March will remain the key season for capturing imagery, the dry season offers the clearest baseline for comparison. Monsoon shots, lush as they may be, tend to obscure rather than reveal.

If Day 1 taught us how forests recover, Day 3 reminded us how they remember. And memory, especially in an ecosystem, isn’t a single datapoint, it’s pattern, persistence, and perspective. The tech we’re trying to build with NCF is designed to hold all three.