To fill the map on the website with plant data, the plant and mapping groups worked on a joint venture today. With today's weather we found it rather difficult to keep dry while working in the field (probably because of the rain). However, the plant and mapping groups today were able to slog through nine patches of various types of reforestation; while mapping the area and identifying various features within them, including tree types, we collected data patch by patch. Each patch took us about 30 minutes to do, and in each patch we were bamboozled with many mistakes. Notwithstanding these difficulties, we managed to complete most of our work today, only leaving three more patches that we must do in the morning.
We also visited a preserve of primary forest. Though none of the mammals were out, we did identify a number of birds, a few frogs, and many different plants--of particular interest was a huge leaf-cutter ant hill (ca. 4 m). The howler monkeys were heard but not seen--like bad children.
FIN
-CIG, NJ
From Mary Boyum and Lorea Ormazabal:
Bring out the ponchos!
Through rain, sleet, snow, or hail, research must go on...especially in our case, rain. Unfortunately half way through mapping out our reforestation sections, we realized that we were naming some sections and plants as unknown. Also, we noticed that for the unknown plants we did not have species descriptions which could lead to duplication of unknown. So tomorrow we need to go back and recount the plants in former sections. We got nine out of the twelve areas counted and mapped, Geovanni's list from his studies, and we can definitely tell a mayo tree from a teak, balsa, guanacaste, or almendro. Then we went on a hike through primary forest and heard howler monkeys and Geovanni's impression of them. We were able to see the sap (glue) come out of a rubber tree. Another highlight of the trip was seeing blue jean frogs and used balsa leaves as umbrellas. :-)
From Adaire Chatry:
Walking Sticks
Today the mapping group shadowed the plant group as they flagged their sample sections. We used a point-vector feature on the Trimble to get the best polygon shapes to show up on the map. We walked the perimeter of each flagged section and filled in a series of attributes for each section. Although we worked all through the rain, we still have a few more plant sections to map tomorrow. We also checked on our Hobos in the cold and "hot" streams and found that they were still submerged correctly. We took another flow rate measurement in the control cold stream and found that the rate had increased since yesterday. We are excited to retrieve our temperature data tomorrow morning and hopefully unearth some useful data on the existence of a hot spring.
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