INTRODUCTION

Weather and climate have a profound influence on ecosystems. The climate of a region can act as a resource for an ecosystem as a whole, influencing the phenology of an area (Chapter 3), and as a determinant of food supply for primates, which can in turn affect reproduction, ranging and social interaction. Whereas climate provides the background conditions, the real-time monitoring of local weather can provide a much more direct link to primate field studies at any given time. For example, daily temperature cycles can influence activity patterns (Chapter 18).

Local weather information can be straightforward to collect and the value of local observations at field study sites has been enhanced in recent years by the increasing use of automated observations. Weather conditions also vary within a field study area as a result of the microclimate (see, for example, Geiger et al., 1995; Rosenberg et al., 1983); as a result, local conditions can differ significantly from larger-scale climatological surveys such as those of Buckle (1996) and McGregor and Nieuwolt (1998).

This chapter describes the types of local weather information that you can collect; shows how weather can vary over both space and time, enabling the interpretation of point observations in the context of wider conditions; and shows how you can measure local atmospheric conditions easily during fieldwork using different types of portable instrumentation.