2018 CRIRE December Summaries

Tuesday, December 18, 2018 OTS Las Cruces Biological Station, Costa Rica This morning I started working on the poster again after having breakfast at 6:30AM.  All I needed to do was add a couple for GIS maps to the poster and I completed this at about 8:30AM..  At that time, Chris Whitehorse, my student team member, came up to me on the computer and said, it's time.  I knew what she meant, she meant it was time for her to do what she needed to get done before we finished up the poster.  She still needed to include the medicinal uses of Cecropia among the Ngobe People, they are the Indigenous People that are here from Panama and we have been working with them all week covering the uses of different plants for different ailments and for ceremonial use.  We also got information regarding how they use Cecropia for curing illnesses and diseases, and this is what Chris was going to include in the poster. So, to summarize my day, I took a break from the poster and finally walked around

Monday, December 17, 2018 Today was the day I worked on the poster all day long in the lab.  It was a stressful day for all the research groups because not only did we have to work on the poster, but there needed to be an agreement between all the parties involved regarding the presentation of the data, photographs, graphs, statistical analyses, and similar other items that are presented in a scientific poster and talk.  I only have one student that is a part of this team; there are two of us so it was not that difficult to come into consensus on what we needed to get done and how to prepare the poster. So, my blog today is not that much in terms of things to cover.  I worked on the poster and I learned through trial and error how to create the poster and how to import photographs.  That is what I think I liked the most from today, that I was able to learn this software that allows me to create scientific posters, and I had to do it through trial and error.  It was frustrating at tim

Sunday, December 16, 2018 OTS Las Cruces Biological Station, Costa Rica Today was a fun day, we did not have to work or do anything if we did not want to..so, I caught up with emails and started working on the poster for the presentation. Most of us went down to the town of San Vito at the pre-arranged time of 1:30pm, we were told we may check out that town and walk around, basically be tourists and enjoy the little, sleepy town of San Vito.  The town was not very busy, but there were plenty of stores open, including restaurants and bars.  There were families in town at that time we were, it looked like they were enjoying their time together after the church services.  Most of the little girls were in dresses and the boys were dressed up too.  I walked around the town and got some shopping done.  I bought some fruit at the fruit vendors' shop, I bought mandarin oranges and also some mangoes.  I didn't know how much the fruit cost, but I trusted them to give me the correct ch

Saturday, December 15, 2018 Today was an exceptionally productive day at the abandoned grazing pasture located in the Las Cruces Biological Station here in Costa Rica.  We had breakfast at the usual time, 6:30AM, and then we recruited two workers to help us in this field work today.  We recruited two young men that are here with their dad from Ahnni Lakota College which is located in eastern Montana, USA; their dad teaches Environmental Science at that college.  Randy and Gabriel are their names and they were very helpful in the work that we needed to get completed today.  We obtained the needed equipment for this outing from the equipment that was brought by Heritage University.  Specifically, we needed GPS units, a weather monitoring instrument for things like wind speed, humidity, temperature and other similar parameters.  We also made sure we had our sacked lunches that we requested the night before at dinner, which is standard protocol here when you are planning to be out in the

Friday, December 14, 2018 Today was a research day for me.  I conducted research (literature review) of similar projects that have looked at secondary succession occurring on abandoned pasture lands in tropical regions.  I was surprised to find that most of the research prior to 2010 was primarily in the Eastern United States on land that has been allowed to become fallow.  I learned today that tropical deforestation has occurred extensively over the past 60 years globally and most of this has been done for agriculture. Deforestation rates are hard to predict, but an it is unquestionably high.  In the 1990s, the estimate provided by Mayaux, et al, 2005 was in the range of 5.8 million hectares per year. In Latin American, the primary reason for converting tropical forest into agricultural pasture is for livestock grazing, and for cash crops such as coffee. The reasons provided on why these areas are no longer used for pasture and allowed to become fallow

12/13/2018-December OTS Costa Rica Thursday Today was an awesome day, we went into the field with the Indigenous Panamanian visitors that were brought to the Station to assist with their knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region, especially from their cultural perspective, which is Ngabe.  We all went down to the abandoned pasture land with the team from Panama and student Christine, Jonathon, and the OTS Director Scott.  We looked at the project area and were introduced to many of the species here and how they are used medicinally, ceremonially, or used for crafts and other material culture. It was evident that there is succession occurring, and that species that are commonly associated with this succession are present and reclaiming this parcel of land from previous use as a cattle pasture.  It was very humid and warm, but it was not unbearable. We are in the process of getting Landsat data for this project and we hope to use this for remote sensing and map generation so th