Entry 1: June 10, 2009

Today was another exhausting day in the bosque in San Luis. My group had the opportunity of sleeping in, but I still feel like I need more sleep here. We had breakfast and then realized that my group needed rainboots because we would be collecting data with Erin (Dr. Linquist) for her project for the rest of the morning. Afterwards we headed up to the lab to learn what her project was all about. I quickly found out that Erin’s project was about Forest Regeneration. Forest Regeneration is basically a method in which you have a secondary forest and you search for ways that the different seedlings have influenced the area. For example: height of the trees, density of tree coverage area, and type of trees in the area. Erin suggested that we would use belt transects to divide the forestry area up into four lines with five plots, totaling up to be fifty meters in each line. Sounds easy, huh? Actually, it was a bit more difficult than we expected. Here’s a little diagram to give you an idea of what exactly we did.

The two types of trees of interest were guava (guyaba in Spanish) and güitite trees. We used the method of nearest neighbor to find out what type of tree was the closest to a guava tree. When we actually started measuring out in the field area we found that there were not as many guava trees as expected—only 4. We had discovered species of morpho trees [trees not of interest]. We also discovered…A TREE ISLAND! A tree island is when a tree from the primary rainforest is left behind and animals bring seedlings from other trees and create an area of dense-like forestry which reduces the amount of grass & the amount of sunlight on the area. I’m really surprised that this information really is of interest to me, but it does! It makes me curious! Maybe behind the ESL teacher and psychology genes in me, the little biologist is really starting to show here in Costa Rica. After we collected data, we ate lunch and accompanied Francie (Dr. Cuffney) to work on her project. Boy, did I know how soaked I was about to become! Francie was more interested in streams and aquatic ecology. We collected data on two streams for five samples each {pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Temperature, Length of Rocks, etc.}. We had a blast! We collected data, took pictures with Francie, and even made a video! Afterwards, we had class on aquatics and climate change. It was pretty interesting to think about some of the water issues the world has. Did you know what the average person from the USA uses 90 gal/day?! But it is only suggested that the average person use 13 gal/day! Wow!

After class, we ate dinner and had class on how to give scientific presentations. Francie had one really over the top slide with animations on it, which made me laugh to TEARS!

Apparently, too many special effects can ruin a presentation. I also talked to Keron online today. He leaves for Raleigh about 2:20 tomorrow. I miss him and my family so much. I also saw a sloth on the trail back to the cabins tonight. How cool! I really do love the beautiful country of Costa Rica!

The Little Biologist,
Brittany