EcoMap Costa Rica : Blog

Our guide, Geovani Bogarín, is in today's New York Times:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/sports/othersports/01outdoors.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=slogin

Christopher Gurguis, Mary Boyum, and Lorea Ormazabal also produced a Tree Guide for Leaves and Lizards using photographs taken by Christopher Gurguis.

The guide is available for download from:

http://www.ecomapcostarica.com/reports/index.shtml

The student reports for the 2008 Field Season are now online:

http://www.ecomapcostarica.com/reports/index.shtml

Latest report from the Smithsonian / OVSICORA-UNA:

4 June-10 June 2008

OVSICORI-UNA reported that an incandescent avalanche descended Arenal's SW flank on 6 June producing an 800-m-long scar and depositing a wide debris fan at the base of the volcano. A plume of dust, ash, and gas drifted W and NW, depositing fine ash in a small area downwind. The plume panicked tourists and park rangers 2 km away to the W. The park was immediately closed for the day and the tourists were evacuated. According to a news article, another incandescent avalanche descended the SW flank on 10 June and generated an ash plume. Authorities evacuated people in the area.

Sources: Observatorio Vulcanologico y Sismologico de Costa Rica-Universidad Nacional (OVSICORI-UNA), Nacion

I have just added a legend to the maps. Although I might adjust the maps further, they are now complete.

I have also adjusted some parameters for the MapServer layers (base map, satellite image, synthetic streams) to make them load more quickly. The improvement should be more noticeable on slower internet connections.

Today we met as a class to discuss what each group needed to do, which included: making an inventory of data, creating a plan for results, discussing conclusions and overall paper format, and turning in field equipment.  We also discussed what our final paper should include (Intro, Methods, Results, Conclusions, and Literature Cited), and what each section of the paper should include.  Then our group continued data analysis, outlined our results, and wrote up our results section.  And we got back our graded annotated bibliographies, which will be a big help when deciding which sources to use in our final papers.

The spring icons have been updated. The 'hot spring' icon has been made clearer, and a new blue circle icon has been used for the cold springs. Blue&white crosses have been used for stream points (the sample point and the measured boundary crossing). These are now connected with a simple flow diagram. This is a simple line drawing that shows how water flows between these points.

Yes we all made it back safe and sound, despite a quick sprint across Bush International Airport to meet a tight connection.

The road data is now complete on the map, and the building photos have also been added. I have a few more map changes to add. Student reports will also be uploaded after they have been completed and graded.

Attached are a group of photos from Johanna's "Welly Wanging" competition that closed the field work on Saturday afternoon. I'll leave it to Johanna to give a commentary. Giovani and Dr. B were judges, and Steve & Debbie made up the out-field spectators.

This morning we waved a fond goodbye to a great group of humans. What a wonderful experience. We want to thank Dr.Brown, Richard Marsden, all of the students and Geovany for their hard work-rain or shine. A special thank you to the parents and the University of Dallas who trusted us to provide these young people with the opportunity to share our dream. We hope this experience has planted the seeds that may someday grow into solutions for how we, the human race, can live symbiotically with Mother Nature.
Muchas Gracias,
Debbie and Steve
Leaves and Lizards Arenal Volcano Cabin Retreat

The course's field assistant, Johanna Weston, coordinated the amazing First Annual Welly-Wanging competition.  Students competed by flinging their field-issue rubber boots off the their right foot without using their hands or kicking the boot.  Competitors were judged based on distance in a best-of-three competition.

Our two winners were Noah Jouett (Best distance:  18 meters) and Mary Boyum (Best distance:  16 meters).  The winners (dubbed the winning wangers)  were garlanded not with a traditional laurel given to Olympic athletes, but with a balsa leaf worn on their heads.  We'll post more photos of the competition later, but here's one taken by Debbie of Leaves and Lizards.  She and Steve, along with our guide Geovany, were our special guests (and only spectators) for the competition.


From left:  Mary Boyum, Adaire Chatry, Johanna Weston, Christopher Gurguis, Samantha Behrent, Lorea Ormazabal, Katheryn Miller, Katherine Biernat, Adriane Smith

All three groups finished their fieldwork yesterday, and so far the data are fairly complete and should give them quite a lot to analyze when we return to Dallas tomorrow.  Steve and Debbie have told us that they have gotten more than they expected from our group, and we hope to have even more to tell them about their property after more analysis is done.

The students have a free day today, and some will head out for whitewater rafting, while others are doing a canopy zip-line tour.  They are anxious to see a little more of the area around us, and are thinking a lot of their friends and family and what to bring home as gifts.  Last night most of the students went to a local church in Monterrey for mass, and enjoyed the experience and the differences in Mass her compared to back home, including for a while bats circling in the top of the church.

We will have them post one more blog entry before we leave, and some photos of yesterday's welly wanging competition.

The mapping group has almost completed the field work and only has to retrieve the HOBO sensors and to process the remaining data. All the panoramic photos were collected during yesterday morning's excellent weather. Noah has stitched all of them, but they still need to be resized and have their north markers added.

The final plant areas were also collected yesterday. All plant areas are marked on the map.
We need a key, but for now:  red = monoculture, yellow = mixed species, and pink/magenta = ornamental.

The springs and other water points were added using the 'hot spring' symbol. We need more symbols, and the hot spring is not too clear. I shall fix these symbols when I return to Irving.

The road data is ready to add, and we should have it up soon.

Panoramic photo has been resized and had its north marker added. This has been uploaded to the panoramic photo section of the site, as an initial test. The others should follow soon.

Another addition is the Arenal walk (zoom out to Arenal and surrounding area) - click this to see the group photo on the lava flow.

Finally, after days of forging through the rain and mud, we had some sunshine.  For the mapping group this weather was ideal for taking panoramic photos at all of the bird group's points throughout the property.  We got a little bit of a late start, around 6:30am, but we still had most of the photos taken before breakfast.  A complete 360̊ panoramic image requires 18 individual fames.  After all of the frames were taken, we stitched them together using software on a pc.  We also mapped two final areas for the plant group and we think that we now have all of the data we need for the map.  Now, with a lot of help from Richard, we will begin putting all of the pieces together for the website.

Around lunchtime we walked to the famous Super Kike.  The weather was barely holding out for us, but we all made it before the big afternoon rain.  However, because we went during the typical siesta time, the store was closed.  We thought that we were going to have to walk right back to Leaves and Lizards when Geovanny came roaring up the hill on his motorcycle.  He, of course, knew the owner of the store and convinced her to open early for us.  She was very nice and we got all of the salsa vegetales(our new favorite condiment) and Costa Rican coffee we could carry to bring home to the USA.  We also got some ice cream and ate it right outside the store.  We made it back to our cabins just as the sky was opening for the afternoon rain.

   This morning we woke up to a sunny, not rainy, morning.  It was absolutely wonderful to walk around with Geovany and his friend, Ulises who is a plant expert.  Ulises and Geovany worked together to help us identify some more of our unknown plants.  We also were able to finish mapping sloth valley and the cabin areas.  After walking to the Super Kike, we started our quadrats.  By dinner time we had finished 8 out of 12 quadrats (which was more than the 6 we expected to complete).  We are very excited to wrap up our plant project tomorrow.  

Today was a beautiful day, very sunny and hot! We slept in until breakfast and did the first half of our bird counts after we ate. Our first two counts were done without Geovani or Dr. Brown, we are getting much better at identifying species! It has been concluded that the three of us have officially "stepped into the dark side", according to Debbie our host. We find ourselves always noticing birds wherever we go, even during our free-time, rather than relaxing and napping we sit on the porch and look for new bird species. Today, we were very excited to discover three new species of hummingbirds that we had not seen before. It is raining now and we are analyzing data before we go back into the field to finish our bird counts for the day. Tomorrow we will be welly wanging!!

Despite dire forecasts of the tropical storm lasting until Sunday, the weather cleared early yesterday afternoon and the resulting mist lifted by about 5pm. Hence what promised to be a wash out for the mapping group actually turned out to be a productive day with a number of panoramic photos shot, and the initial experimental photos were stitched successfully. We are finding that manual exposure and auto focus are good, productive combination. Adaire has been using her artistic talents with the whiteboard images that mark the beginning of each location's photo sequence - see the photos below for some examples.

Yesterday, the mapping group also switched the HOBO temperature sensors at the springs. At the moment, they do not appear to show evidence of a hot spring but surface runoff has been a big problem. An attempt has been made to alleviate this by attempting to divert runoff to the possible hot spring, and to locate the sensors deeper. Digging in the hotspring site found two soil types. This possible mystery was solved when we looked at Spring 3 (more of a storm washout, really). The 'top soil' is a brown soil containing a lot of fine gravel/coarse sand. Under this lies the 'bed rock' - an orange clay, probably alluvial. Dr. B and myself think that soil analysis will probably make a good project for next year.

Map Updates: The main house property line has been added to the online map. The buildings have also been added, but they need photos in their pop-up windows. The Map Group has lots of data that is being processed, and should be online today/tomorrow.

Richard
(writing this on our balcony at about 6:30. I have a perfect clear view of Arenal in front of me with a little bit of steam activity from crater C. Parrots are flying around (noisy birds), and there's the general morning chatter of the rainforest below me.)

As indicated by our title, the mapping group overcame a very wet obstacle in accomplishing our objective today, along with another which will be discussed later. In retrieving our HOBO temperature sensors in the pouring rain from our "hot spring" (results on that later...) and in taking panoramic photos in deep mud, the mapping group effectively accomplished our objectives.

Namely, our main objective was to figure out if a supposed hot spring on the property is in fact a hot spring. At this point, our results seem to invalidate that supposition--the "hot spring" was in fact colder than our control. However, we are running a series of tests over the next 48 hours to validate these results.

More tommorow, ciao.

-Mapping.

-P.S. "falling up" means falling up a very slippery slope in a creek bed. Maybe Adaire will tell you one day.

The Plant and Mapping group finished our map of "Mixed 1," perhaps the most difficult patch at Leaves and Lizards.  We had woken up to a dark, gray and stormy Costa Rica at 5:30 this morning and in the hour and a half of sampling, not much had changed.  Stumbling down the side of "Mixed 1," Adaire and I plotted a number of points to form the map.  Lacking any of my field gear and (more importantly), lacking a waterproof notebook, I tallied the Melina trees on my left hand (see below).  Often getting a point for the Trimble took some time (up to 20 minutes in heavier forest).  Nevertheless, we are glad to have finished the map of the patch.

Enterolobium cyclocarpum

                Over the course of our research here at Leaves and Lizards, we have encountered one tree we feel has special significance.  The Guanacaste is a tree endemic to the tropics found in a number of the reforestation patches.  The tree has smooth bark, alternating feathery leaves, and can grow to be 35 meters tall.

                Guanacaste lends its name to the province in which we are staying.  The sampling we have done of this tree will be a good remembrance of the trip.  One of the first trees our guide Geovanni pointed out for us, its name has been locked in our minds since the second day.

Last night began the first tropical storm of the season, so all day today was rainy and very foggy. We did not see as many species of birds as usual. We did, however see a new species of hummingbird which we have yet to identify. We currently have counted 836 birds (of 63 total species) since the first day of our bird counts. We began our data analysis and density calculations for each species today. The weather finally cleared this afternoon, and we hope for a good day tomorrow, we get to sleep in till 6:30!!

-          The Bird crew!