Noah Jouett: May 2008 Archives

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.

From the collaborators of the plant and mapping groups:

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.

From Noah,

Day 1 of our field work was fun-filled and very productive. We arrived at L&L at about 4PM on Sunday, jotted down some quick data, and rested for today's work.We got up at 5:30AM to get acquainted the property and plot our base point. Furthermore, we planted our first temperature sensors to acquire readings from our first spring. Also, there apparently lies a supposed hot spring which we will investigate later.

From Sam:

I'd like to add to Noah's description that a few of the water sites are somewhat difficult to get to.  In particular, one most likely will require a rope, and it should be interesting to see if we manage to get data from this site.  Tomorrow, we will pick up our HOBO temperature monitors from the spring early in the morning, and possibly map some of the roads and trails on the property.  Tonight, we are going to hike to the base of Arenal.

From Adaire:

It's a jungle out there, but our new friend Louis and his electric machete  helped us to forge a path to two of the four springs we were introduced to today.  We are excited to determine whether or not one of the springs is a hot spring by comparing it with a control nearby.  Hopefully, this data will help our hosts to decide if the spring is an investment worth pursuing. Today we got acquainted with  our equipment and established a few base points with the Trimble.  We are now waiting for the correction data, which will correct our points and polygons within 1 meter. 

The mapping group is far less clever than our colleagues, sorry to say.

On Friday, our group finished off our project protocol (like a business plan, except more science-y); we then created our data dictionary via our GPS software, which will enable us to associate features such as text fields, menus, etc. with various points in our study site; and finally, we were introduced (as Richard noted in a previous entry) to the panoramic head.

Also, we met extensively with the bird and mapping groups to enhance our data dictionary through adding the aforementioned features, except tailored to the needs of these groups, thus maximizing the information our map will display. We plan to accompany these groups at least once on the trip to help them find their exact point (i.e. latitude and longitude) and to collect our needed data for our features.

-N.

Hello,

We are the mapping group!

We have three members, who are:

Samantha B: 3rd year Biology major
Adaire C: 4th year Biology major.
Noah J: 2nd year English major.

We are very excited to learn the terrain of CR and to assist with the reforestation project there.  We are even more excited to work with Dr. Brown in this project.