FLAAR has many research and educational products underway. Since we have 20 years experience with wide-format inkjet printer digital technology we share this knowledge with the FLAAR Mesoamerica teams that study Neotropical flora, fauna, and ecosystems (especially of Guatemala, Central America).
So here are three different FLAAR REPORTS that you can download; each edition is for different areas of focus.
If you are a botanist, ecologist, archaeologist, and especially if working in Mesoamerica, this report is for you.
If you are in the world of wide-format inkjet printing, this report reviews banding, edge splatter, and what colors a UV-curing printer can, or cannot achieve.
If you are working to help schools anywhere that Spanish is a local language, this .pdf shows you how banners can help teach school kids ABCs and lots of other basics.
Horacio Palacios knows the plants and insects in many parts of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. He has worked many years finding and mapping satellite sites of Naranjo (and other parts of the park) with Arqla. Vilma Fialko and Arquitecto Raul Noriega.
But now, with the cooperation of FLAAR Mesoamerica, we can record the ecosystems they hiked through in past years (sometimes decades ago). So on July 7, 2019, park ranger Teco (Moises Daniel Perez Diaz) took photographs of terrestrial Aechemea magdalenae on the south side of Rio Holmul (about 20 km from Naranjo). Horacio showed them where this pital was.
Aechemea magdalenae produces useful fibers, better than most maguey-like plants of Yucatan or elsewhere. If funding were available we would like to help local Mayan people around the park start a basketry, hat-making, and mat-making company to use local native renewable resources to make bio-degradable souvenirs to sell to tourists around Peten.
But to start gardens of Aechemea magdalenae you need a source of seeds and root stock that is not from inside the park. About seven months ago we found a pital outside the park property at the northwest; so now this is the second one outside the park (at the north). With the help of Teco we have already found two pital areas inside the park.
My idea is to find ecosystems outside the park that have been destroyed (chopped down, bulldozed, burned over, for milpas or cattle pastures) and encourage people to replant the natural plants around aguadas. This also protects the water sources for lots of native animals.
Our team at FLAAR (USA) and FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala) is making a list of every plant within the park that can be utilized by local people to make and sell handicrafts to tourists. Plus we are working to increase tourists who visit Yaxha by publishing our FLAAR Reports on the amazing flora and fauna of the biodiverse ecosystems we are documenting within the park.
Next step is to reclaim devastated land outside the park and to bring a halt to people sneaking into the park to chop down and burn down areas for milpas for maize. A lot of work to do but we are ready, able, eager, and motivated. We are starting applications for funding. If you or your company or if you can network with other people to assist, please let us know: frontdesk symbol FLAAR.org
Photos are by Teco, Moises Daniel Perez Diaz, park ranger, with the Huawei P20.
It helps national parks, botanical gardens, zoos, and comparable places that provide educational material for visitors if their signage is nicely presented. Obviously the design style and colors that are featured are key factors: light colored text on light colored background is the most common design disaster. Dark colored text on dark background color is an equally common failure in graphic design.
But once the design and layout are nicely done it helps to print on appropriate material. And, it definitely helps to have a good ink. For example, if you use a cheap ink made in a low-bid factory the colors on your sign or info-poster will fade within a few months. Yet I have photographs 1 meter high printed with pigment water-based inks on an HP DesignJet printer and others on a ColorSpan printer. These prints have lasted over 12 years in the sun of Guatemala, Central America.
In order to learn which inks are good, the team of FLAAR-REPORTS visits ink factories around the world. This year we were flown to two different continents to study ink, most recently to India. We visited the A.T. Inks factories and more than four print shops using A.T. Inks on glass, on metal, on textiles.
Since our Neotropical plant and animal research team (of FLAAR-Mesoamerica) is working in Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo (Peten, Guatemala), we have been studying the park signage here. Our goal is to utilize our 20 years of experience in the world of wide-format inkjet printing to develop park signs that last longer (since rather obviously the sun in the rain forests of Guatemala is rather strong). So lots of FLAAR-REPORTS are in preparation about A.T. Inks, especially their ink for UV-LED curing printers and their ink for wide-format inkjet textile printers. Every month we will have a fresh new research report for you.
Birds of a national park, flowers, butterflies, can be shown in full-color if you have an ink with good quality. This is a test image we inspected in India printed with UV-LED curing inks from A.T. Inks.
Many people dream of launching a start-up business in their home: in their basement, in their garage, in an extra room in their house.
So our goal is to help people put their dream to work as a real project. So we are cooperating and coordinating with DTG Digital T-shirt printer companies and appropriate brands of heat presses.
People around the world often wish they could initiate a T-shirt printing company: starting with printing for local schools or churches, local charities, local sports clubs, local museums.
So let’s get started. We provide more info on T-shirt printer options here, DTG Digital T-shirt printer brands that we know.
FLAAR Mesoamerica team holding T-shirt samples provided by DTG Digital at FESPA Munich 2019.
The photo here shows Dr Nicholas exploring a swamp-like, bog-like ecosystem in the far west edge of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. We do research on plants and animals (and insects and reptiles) at this park one week every month. We had just noticed a white flower that we had never previously seen in the previous 10 months work in this park. The only way to get close enough to photograph it was to wade into abyss (and hope it was not “neck deep”). Fortunately it was only knee-deep.
FLAAR Mesoamerica is a division of FLAAR that is devoted to studying flora and fauna and ecosystems of Guatemala. FLAAR itself was incorporated as a non-profit research and educational institution in 1969 to map the Mayan pyramids, temples, and palaces of Yaxha, an ancient city between Tikal and the border with Belize. From 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974, FLAAR together with Miguel Orrego and capable students from Guatemala and USA, worked to protect the fragile ecosystems here and Nicholas encouraged the then president of Guatemala and the FYDEP director of the Peten area to declare Laguna Yaxha and Laguna Sacnab as a parque nacional. The initial declaration was accomplished in 1974. It then took 19 more years to create the full size of the park as it is today; other individuals and other NGOs did this work in the 1980’s and 1990’s (so the park got Naranjo area added) and everything was finalized in the early 1990’s, 20 years after we initiated the idea in the 1970’s of protecting the ruins and the flora and fauna as a national park.
FLAAR-REPORTS is a division of FLAAR that was developed in the late 1990’s when Dr Nicholas Hellmuth was awarded a Visiting Research Professor grant and 6-month position at Japan’s national museum of ethnology in Osaka. The project in Japan was to teach the staff at the museum how to scan (digitize) and handle photographs in the museum’s archive (Nicholas was a photographer since age 16, and especially at age 19 when he worked at Tikal for 12 months).
So we have different teams of capable and experienced individuals working on separate projects: flora and fauna in Guatemala; inkjet printers, inks, printable materials, cutters, laminators, etc around the world. And a third division, MayanToons, which writes and illustrates books in Spanish, English, and local Mayan languages for local schools in remote rural areas of Guatemala.
Dr Nicholas Hellmuth studing Sagittaria lancifolia in Savanna of 3 Fern Species, at far west end of Parque Nacional Yaxha Naranjo Nakum, south of Laguna Perdida (and north of Laguna Lankaja).
Click here to open Sagittaria lancifolia on a close-up shoot.
Apollo ink sample print in their booth at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai.
Last week Pablo M. Lee (inkjet ink evaluation manager) and Dr Nicholas were flown to India to visit ink factory, pigment production factory (pigments are main ingredients in inkjet ink), visit bottling factory and the very impressive R&D labs and facilities of A.T. Inks, in Vadodara area of India.
A.T. Inks is the brand name of Rex-Tone Industries Ltd. In addition to being shown all the chemistry and production facilities, the host kindly provided car-and-driver so we could visit historically and culturally important parts of India, especially around Delhi, plus a change to experience a 550 year old fortress palace by staying there as a hotel on the last night in this remarkable country.
A.T. Inks will be printing color samples for FLAAR and sending these to Guatemala. We will then donate these to Mayan schools in remote rural areas of Guatemala and will donate the panorama photos of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo to the park administrators and to other entities associated with the park.
Dr Nicholas and Pablo M. Lee are en route to China to inspect a new ink that they learned about at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai last month.
This ink, from APOLLO ink company, is for outdoor printing yet the ink is not solvent-based and not needing UV-curing.
FLAAR is working with the park administrators of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo on their educational signs for part visitors, so learning about new inks is helpful. Most outdoor signs fade quickly from the sunlight.
Apollo ink sample print in their booth at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai.
We will issue a full report on Apollo ink company and their ink when we return from China.