Local Scientific Field Operations

Our services

The following are examples of the kinds of services we can offer. Carrying out environmental research in a foreign country can be extremely challenging due to differences in laws, language, customs, unfamiliar geography and many other factors. We have established a team of experts that will be invaluable in helping you achieve your research goals.

1. Research planning and feasibility

• Identify suitable study regions, sampling sites, protected areas, watersheds, forests, farms, cities, industrial areas, etc.

• Conduct preliminary site visits and provide photographs, coordinates, access information, and suitability assessments.

• Assess seasonal conditions, including rainfall, flooding, dust, agricultural burning, vegetation cycles, road accessibility, and electrical reliability.

• Advise researchers on the best months for fieldwork and sampling.

• Identify practical limitations that may not be apparent from maps or satellite data.

• Help develop fieldwork plans, schedules, budgets, and risk assessments.

• Estimate local costs for transportation, lodging, personnel, equipment storage, laboratory work, and consumables.

• Identify Nigerian collaborators whose expertise complements the proposed research.

• Contribute local knowledge and preliminary observations to grant proposals.

• Provide letters describing local feasibility and available support.

• Help foreign investigators satisfy requirements for local participation, capacity building, or broader societal impacts.

• Obtain preliminary quotations from vendors, laboratories, vehicle operators, and field assistants.

• Conduct pilot measurements or collect preliminary samples for proposal development.

2. Institutional partnerships and scientific introductions

• Nigerian universities and research institutes.

• Federal, state, and local environmental agencies.

• Meteorological, geological, forestry, wildlife, agricultural, and water authorities.

• Protected-area managers and conservation organizations.

• Hospitals and public-health organizations where environmental-health research is involved.

• Community organizations, traditional leaders, landowners, farmers, and local businesses.

• Nigerian scientists, technicians, students, and laboratories.

• International NGOs and development organizations operating in Nigeria.

3. Permits, approvals, and regulatory coordination

• Scientific research permits.

• Protected-area and wildlife research authorization.

• Permissions for plant, animal, soil, rock, water, or biological-sample collection.

• Access to government-controlled or restricted sites.

• Permits for drone or other remote-sensing operations.

• Installation of monitoring stations, towers, antennas, cameras, or samplers.

• Access and benefit-sharing requirements for biological and genetic resources.

• Institutional biosafety, animal-care, or human-subjects approvals when applicable.

• Permissions from state governments, municipalities, landowners, and traditional authorities.

4. Travel and field logistics

• Airport reception and ground transportation.

• Domestic flights and intercity transportation.

• Vehicle rental, four-wheel-drive vehicles, boats, motorcycles, and drivers.

• Lodging near study sites.

• Long-term accommodation for visiting researchers.

• Field camps and mobile research bases.

• Meals, drinking water, fuel, communications, and field supplies.

• Secure equipment storage.

• Shipment of equipment within Nigeria.

• Local purchasing of tools and consumables.

• Replacement parts and emergency repairs.

• Translators and local guides.

• Travel schedules for teams working at multiple sites.

• Backup plans for weather, road closures, equipment failure, or transportation disruptions.

5. Site access and community engagement

• Identify landowners and the relevant community authorities.

• Obtain permission for entry, sampling, or instrument placement.

• Explain the purpose of the research in locally appropriate language.

• Arrange meetings with traditional leaders and community representatives.

• Consult residents about site selection and potential local concerns.

• Recruit trusted site custodians.

• Establish agreements for protecting instruments on private or community land.

• Develop procedures for complaints, questions, or unexpected impacts.

• Provide communities with understandable summaries of the research.

• Organize meetings at which results are returned to participating communities.

• Help ensure that local knowledge is acknowledged and used ethically.

• Advise foreign researchers about cultural practices and expectations.

6. Local scientific personnel

• Field technicians.

• Research assistants.

• University students and recent graduates.

• Taxonomic specialists.

• Wildlife and vegetation surveyors.

• Air- and water-sampling technicians.

• Laboratory assistants.

• GIS and remote-sensing specialists.

• Drivers, guides, boat operators, and equipment guards.

• Translators and community liaisons.

• Electricians, machinists, fabricators, and instrument-repair technicians.

• Train personnel in standardized sampling methods.

• Maintain training records.

• Conduct safety briefings.

• Evaluate performance and data quality.

• Manage payroll and field allowances transparently.

• Build stable local teams that can continue monitoring after foreign researchers leave.

7. Instrument installation and operation

• Inspect and prepare monitoring sites.

• Arrange for site security.

• Install instrument shelters, fencing, mounting structures, towers, solar panels, and communications equipment.

• Arrange electrical service or off-grid power.

• Install weather stations, air-quality monitors, deposition collectors, water samplers, soil sensors, cameras, acoustic recorders, and related instruments.

• Photograph and document installations.

• Record precise coordinates, elevations, instrument heights, orientations, and site conditions.

• Carry out scheduled instrument checks.

• Replace filters, cartridges, reagents, batteries, memory cards, desiccants, and consumable components.

• Clean optical surfaces, inlets, rain gauges, solar panels, and sampling equipment.

• Perform zero checks, span checks, flow checks, leak checks, and other routine quality-control procedures.

• Arrange local calibration or return instruments to the manufacturer.

• Troubleshoot failures through video calls with the principal investigator.

• Maintain spare-parts inventories.

• Download and transmit data.

• Monitor data streams for instrument failure.

• Keep detailed maintenance and calibration logs.

• Respond rapidly after storms, flooding, vandalism, power failure, or communications outages.

• Decommission sites and return or store equipment at the conclusion of a study.

8. Sample collection, handling, and shipment

• Collection of air, rain, surface water, groundwater, soil, sediment, vegetation, insects, microorganisms, and geological specimens.

• Repeat sampling according to a foreign investigator’s protocol.

• Preparation and labeling of containers.

• Field blanks, duplicates, standards, and other quality-control samples.

• Chain-of-custody documentation.

• Field filtration, preservation, refrigeration, or freezing.

• Temporary storage in secure and controlled conditions.

• Preparation of sample inventories and photographic records.

• Transfer to Nigerian laboratories.

• Preparation of permitted shipments to overseas laboratories.

• Coordination with certified couriers, customs specialists, and receiving institutions.

• Documentation of temperature and sample condition during transport.

• Archiving of reserve samples where appropriate.

9. Data collection and quality assurance

• Implement sampling protocols supplied by the principal investigator.

• Develop field forms and electronic data-entry systems.

• Record metadata consistently.

• Verify coordinates, dates, times, units, and sample identifiers.

• Conduct routine reviews for missing or anomalous measurements.

• Maintain calibration, maintenance, and chain-of-custody records.

• Back up data locally and to secure cloud storage.

• Transmit data on an agreed schedule.

• Prepare weekly or monthly field reports.

• Create maps and site inventories.

• Document deviations from the protocol.

• Help prepare quality-assurance project plans.

• Arrange independent audits or duplicate measurements.

• Preserve raw data.

• Maintain confidentiality and follow agreed data-ownership rules.

10. Biological and conservation research

• Biodiversity inventories.

• Vegetation plots and forest surveys.

• Camera-trap installation and maintenance.

• Acoustic monitoring of birds, bats, frogs, and other wildlife.

• Transect and point-count surveys.

• Habitat-condition assessments.

• Wetland and mangrove surveys.

• Invasive-species monitoring.

• Wildlife mortality and roadkill surveys.

• Pollinator monitoring.

• Collection of water, soil, vegetation, hair, feathers, feces, or environmental-DNA samples.

• Assistance with animal tracking and tagging projects under approved protocols.

• Restoration-project monitoring.

• Human–wildlife conflict surveys.

• Community-based conservation studies.

• Locating local taxonomic experts and reference collections.

• Training local observers to make standardized long-term measurements.

11. Atmospheric, climate, and air-pollution research

• Selection of urban, industrial, roadside, rural, coastal, and background monitoring sites.

• Installation and operation of weather and air-quality stations.

• Measurements of particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, greenhouse gases, black carbon, and volatile organic compounds.

• Filter collection for chemical analysis.

• Passive-sampler deployment and recovery.

• Indoor-air-quality sampling.

• Emission studies of traffic, generators, cooking, refuse burning, industry, agriculture, and wildfires.

• Boundary-layer and meteorological observations.

• Aerosol and dust collection during Saharan dust events.

• Rainwater and atmospheric-deposition sampling.

• Greenhouse-gas flux measurements in wetlands, forests, farms, and waste sites.

• Verification of satellite observations with ground measurements.

• Locating power, internet access, secure rooftops, or tower sites.

• Arrangement of measurements using local light aircraft.

• Maintaining instruments through multimonth or multiyear projects.

• Obtaining local meteorological and emissions data where available.

12. Water, hydrology, and ocean or coastal research

• River, lake, groundwater, estuary, mangrove, and coastal sampling.

• Stream-flow and water-level monitoring.

• Installation of gauges, loggers, and automatic samplers.

• Drinking-water and wastewater studies.

• Agricultural-runoff studies.

• Flood, erosion, and sediment monitoring.

• Microplastic and contaminant sampling.

• Wetland and watershed assessments.

• Sampling from wells and boreholes.

• Locating historical water records and local knowledge of flooding.

• Boat rental, boat operators, and shoreline access.

• Maintenance of remote water-monitoring instruments.

• Community water-use surveys when properly approved.

13. Geological and soil research

• Reconnaissance and access to geological field sites.

• Rock, mineral, sediment, and soil sampling.

• Mapping support and GPS documentation.

• Soil-profile descriptions.

• Erosion and landslide monitoring.

• Groundwater and hydrogeological surveys.

• Mining-impact and abandoned-mine studies.

• Geochemical sampling.

• Coastal sediment and delta research.

• Installation and maintenance of seismometers, geophones, or other geophysical instruments.

• Identification of Nigerian laboratories for mineralogical and chemical analysis.

• Secure storage and shipment of specimens.

• Liaison with landowners, mining operators, and regulatory authorities.

14. Agricultural and ecosystem research

• Locating representative farms and agricultural regions.

• Recruiting cooperating farmers.

• Crop, soil, fertilizer, pesticide, and irrigation studies.

• Measurements of methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

• Crop-damage and climate-impact assessments.

• Soil carbon measurements.

• Biochar, regenerative-agriculture, and restoration trials.

• Agricultural burning and air-quality studies.

• Pest and plant-disease monitoring.

• Long-term experimental plots.

• Interviews with farmers, subject to ethical-review requirements.

• Monitoring equipment and plots between visits by the foreign investigator

15. Remote sensing and geographic information systems

• GIS mapping.

• Land-use and land-cover classification.

• Selection of satellite-validation sites.

• Ground-truth observations.

• GPS surveys.

• Georeferenced field photography.

• Drone imagery where properly authorized.

• Vegetation, flood, fire, shoreline, and urban-growth mapping.

• Integration of field measurements with satellite observations.

• Preparation of maps for proposals, reports, and publications.

• Creation of secure maps showing study sites and access routes.

16. Laboratory and analytical support

• Identify qualified Nigerian laboratories.

• Compare capabilities, detection limits, accreditation, turnaround time, and cost.

• Arrange analysis of water, soil, air filters, biological material, or geological specimens.

• Oversee sample delivery and chain of custody.

• Observe or document analytical procedures when requested.

• Arrange interlaboratory comparisons.

• Help laboratories obtain standards and consumables.

• Coordinate equipment use at universities or government institutes.

• Transmit analytical results and supporting quality-control data.

• Arrange shipment abroad when the necessary analysis is unavailable locally.

17. Health, safety, and security support

• Project-specific risk assessments.

• Field safety plans and check-in procedures.

• Reliable drivers and appropriate vehicles.

• First-aid supplies and trained field personnel.

• Identification of nearby clinics and emergency facilities.

• Emergency communications.

• Weather, flooding, heat, wildlife, and terrain precautions.

• Secure storage and discreet transportation of valuable equipment.

• Site-specific security advice from qualified providers.

• Medical or emergency evacuation services obtained through specialist companies.

• Orientation on cultural practices, local conditions, and appropriate conduct.

18. Administration and financial management

• Detailed local budgets.

• Vendor quotations.

• Purchasing and procurement.

• Transparent receipts and expense reports.

• Local personnel contracts.

• Scheduling and project calendars.

• Inventory and asset records.

• Coordination of taxes, insurance, and employment requirements through qualified advisers.

• Management of small research subawards or field budgets.

• Progress reports tied to agreed milestones.

• Support for audits and sponsor documentation.