In the dry season any rain is welcome. It refreshes the whole ecosystem. Many of the plant and animals living in this area have to endure the tight bottleneck of very little rain for several months. Rain is plentiful the rest of the year. Today, it drizzled very lightly during the morning field exercises making the whole morning very comfortable to work in. After lunch and a lecture, at about 3:00, it started to rain steadily given the vegetation a real soaking. This kept the afternoon cool (in low 80’s). While the rain gives a welcome respite from the heat, we hope it doesn’t cut into our planned sunset picnic supper.
As for the day for our group… we had breakfast at 7:15 and students moved through 3 stations in hands on learning of some field equipment. Some of the equipment Students learned to use include sling pyschrometers (dew point and humidity), clinometers (for slopes and heights), and densiometers (canopy cover). They also explored different protocols for gathering samples of populations. After a brief break, we broke into 3 groups that all looked at the tight mutualistic co-evolutionary relationship between Bullhorn Acacias and Pseudomyrnex ants. See Will’s capstone blog for more details. In this exercise we moved from observations and questions to the process and design of small experiments to try to answer a question or test a hypothesis. I was very pleased with the relaxed good energy, good insight, and effort.
We then had lunch and a brief break before having a lecture from one of the leaders of ACG (Area de Conservacion de Guanacaste). This is a large connected series of parks that connect large tracts of marine, dry forest, cloud forest and rainforest ecosystems. The protected area of dry forest is the largest in the New World. The lecture was in Spanish. The lecturer spoke slowly and clearly and he had good a current visuals. He moved to English only to reinforce more complicated points. He clearly outlined the growth of the park since its inception in 1966. The first piece had been a huge cattle ranch, and the site preserved initially because it’s historical importance as the site of a the battle of Santa Rosa.
I have to run off now. I know you really want to hear about your kids and see some visuals. I will have time tonight to post