Cycles and Scales

Fall in the Tropics

2011-01-21T07:54:00.001-08:00

In the seasonal tropics, fall is the end of the rainy season. The temperature doesn't change that much but the rains end and the leaves of many tree species fall to the ground. It is a little confusing because fall in the tropics marks the beginning of their summer. A dry season in contrast to their rainy "winter".

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks I spent in Guanacaste. Sadly my waterproof, impact-proof, dust-proof camera finally broke after two years. I thought it was suppose to be "tough"! These were taken with my phone.

Some trees are losing their leaves while others stay green.

The ground is covered by leaves. Those are snake gaiters on my legs because I often don't see snakes in the forest until I am right next to them.

Snakes like this huge boa (which are no danger to me, but there are plenty of others that are dangerous.)

This orchid is flowering on a tree behind our little house.

A tree trunk becomes a planter.

A funny fig tree.

Anthropocenic Art

2010-12-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

Check out this post about Alexis Rockman on Wired Science.

Biodiversity and Disease

2010-12-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

The power of biodiversity is one of the most important lessons from the science of ecology. Higher biodiversity has been shown to lead to higher productivity (Cardinale et al. 2007), higher stability (Tilman et al. 2005), and greater resilience (Elmqvist et al. 2003). Now, a new study just published in nature supports the idea that preserving biodiverse ecosystems can reduce the prevalence of human diseases (Keesing et al. 2010).

Despite the value of biodiversity we continue to destroy habitat and alter the earth's biogeochemical cycles. Both of these actions are greatly reducing biodiversity and driving the current mass extinction. It seems that there's nothing we can't kill if we put our mindlessness to it (link).

Cardinale, Bradley J, Justin P Wright, Marc W Cadotte, Ian T Carroll, Andy Hector, Diane S Srivastava, Michel Loreau, and Jerome J Weis. 2007. Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity. PNAS 104, no. 46: 18123-18128.

Elmqvist, Thomas, Carl Folke, Magnus Nyström, Garry Peterson, Jan Bengtsson, Brian Walker, and Jon Norberg. 2003. Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1, no. 9 (November): 488-494.

Keesing, Felicia, Lisa K. Belden, Peter Daszak, Andrew Dobson, C. Drew Harvell, Robert D. Holt, Peter Hudson, et al. 2010. Impacts of biodiversity on the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases. Nature 468, no. 7324 (December): 647-652.

Tilman, David, Stephen Polasky, and Clarence Lehman. 2005. Diversity, productivity and temporal stability in the economies of humans and nature. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 49, no. 3 (May): 405-426.

Coal

2010-11-23T12:47:00.000-08:00

It turns out that coal, just like oil is going to run out. It looks like estimates of reserves are too generous and estimates of demands are too conservative. Read this article from Nature for more.

Rain

2010-06-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

It’s raining here. This is a picture of me standing in the rain.

I haven’t felt like written much lately. I guess events of the last year on the ecological front have been particularly dark. Sometimes I when things get dark I wonder, what’s the point of doing anything if nobody else cares?

What do I mean? What is so dark? Obviously there is the Gulf of Mexico. It’s as if BP stuck a fork in the carotid artery of the earth. No wait, it’s worse than that. This wound is a mile below the surface. This is internal bleeding. The kind that’s difficult to see and understand from the surface.

Awful amounts of oil have been spilling into the ocean for months now. And the BP strategy of dealing with it? Add toxic dispersant chemicals that are not a proven ecological solution but a clear first salvo in the PR and legal battles that BP is ramping up to fight for the next 20 years (as Exxon did after Valdez). If the oil is dispersed (or below the surface) it’s not a problem people can see. And problems that we can’t see are problems that fall down our priority list below those that we can see. What do we care about? Oil spill? Sure but after the economy. After the immigration problem (what ever that is). After what ever pointless political controversy of the day rules the headlines. Somebody’s mistress, somebody’s gaff. After the war (or do we even remember that is happening anymore?)

Here are a couple pictures of fungi. They are detritivores. That means they make life out of death.

So the oil spill is one dark thing. The other is a while back. Long forgotten in this cynical view of the American public’s collective memory. It’s our failure in Copenhagen to agree to do anything about climate change. This isn’t just an American failure, in my opinion, it is a failure of the human species. A species of individuals too concerned with there own individual accumulation of riches (or imagined riches) to do anything about the foundation washing out from underneath them. Sure we can argue about the details. China said this… The US said that… If only X country had agreed to Y, an agreement could have been reached. But in the end the story is just that we’re not going to do anything significant to slow climate change in the next few years. The economic downturn/recession/whatever in the US has effectively killed climate legislation before it started. The administration, understandably, has to bow down to the public and corporate world’s demands for handouts so we can all still feel like we’re rich. The only successful legislation is that which can be cast as a hand out to public and corporate interests alike (healthcare anyone). Climate legislation is so easily cast as hurting both of these interests that it is a no go from the start.

It’s not as if I’m surprised. I’d be surprised it our species woke up one day and suddenly started acting as though the future mattered. In the history of our species the future has more often then not been better than the past. And understanding that invisible gasses or unseen oil spills are more important in the long run than making the mortgage payment on the house we “own” but can’t afford is probably too much to ask. Those unemployment checks are running out. Gas prices are going back up. You’ve got to leave work early to beat the traffic and pick up the kids on time to make it to Sam’s club and back through traffic to get home and get dinner ready and still have time exercise to keep your weight down not to mention read, watch, and listen to the news so you know what all the pundits have to say about what Sarah Palin said on her facebook page today.

Someone smart brought up the idea of collective madness to me the other day. I think of it as a group of people doing something totally crazy that seems normal because everyone else they know is doing the same crazy stuff. It’s even more bizarre when those collective mad recognize the problems with their behavior but keep doing it because everyone else is. But we do. We keep contributing because it’s the easy thing to do. Even if it means that future generations will not be richer, healthier, and happier than us (though we generally don’t feel rich, healthy, or happy now).

So how is collective madness stopped? What about human psychology got us here in the first place? Will we only change when we are forced to? What exactly would it take to force such change?

If I was smarter I would wax hopeful at this point. But I wont. I’m plum out of hope. At least in the short term. Right now I only hope that the thing that forces us to change is big enough to make deep changes in the culture of our species. I hope for a “never again” attitude to arise with respect to the destructive culture with created. But at the same time to hope for that kind of change means to hope for disasters so bad that we all feel the pain of them and that pain causes us to change. And I don’t hope for painful disasters. Only for the lessons learned through them.

This is a video of a dung beetle. He is rolling a ball of poop. One man’s poop is another man’s pleasure.

New Year in the Dry Forest

2010-01-03T12:45:00.000-08:00

January is the start of the dry season in the tropical dry forest. The daily rains stop and don't return for around six months. The leaves of about half of the forest's trees turn yellow, red, and brown and fall off during January. This little Capuchin monkey probably doesn't care about the pretty colored leaves behind him. He's just hoping there will still be fruit to eat during the dry season.

I've been here for a few days measuring trees and downloading data from dataloggers I left in the forest. The scratching in this picture is evidence that I've already been covered with insect bites.

You can see in this picture something I call dry season gap exploitation. The large deciduous upper canopy trees lose their leaves and the lower canopy trees beneath hold onto their leaves and keep growing. These shorter evergreen trees must have access to water resources that the deciduous trees can't reach.

A lot of plants flower and fruit during the dry season. Here's some pretty pink flowers from a very common liana in this forest and the orange fruit of these huge bromeliads.

That's all for now. I'll leave you with this crabby ctenosaur who wouldn't get out of the road as I drove by him today.

Eating Animals

2009-12-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

I recently finished Jonathan Safran Foer's new book Eating Animals. I'm not a book reviewer and I'm not about to try my hand at it but I think this book is great. It's the most honest perspective I've seen on coming to terms with the ethical, environmental, personal, and cultural questions surrounding meat eating. Foer presents a pretty gruesome but apparently honest view of industrial meat production and the issues surrounding it. Perhaps the most potent point he makes is that most of us participate in meat eating while pretending that the violence we are contributing to does not exist. Like how we've spent all this money on wars and not included the cost in our national budget. Like how we buy cheap junk from walmart while ignoring the impacts of its production. My mom recently said that Americans seem to be obsessed with "reality" TV but can't face reality. I don't want to tell people how to live or what to eat but is it asking to much for us be honest with ourselves about the consequences of our actions?

Don't Drill

2009-11-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

We're already past the critical threshold of 350 ppm for atmospheric CO2 (Hansen et al. 2008; Rockström et al. 2009). Perhaps out of desperation we are starting to entertain lots of crazy sounding geo-engineering ideas for mitigating climate change like space mirrors and ocean fertilization. But what if we did somethings that we know would work? Like, (and I know this sounds crazy but,) not drilling all of the oil out of the ground and burning it into the atmosphere. We could just leave it in the ground where it doesn't hurt anybody.

In a first of it's kind initiative Ecuador is proposing to set aside an area of forest that lies above some 850 million barrels of heavy crude oil. Forever. Finer and others write in Biotropica that this proposal would not only leave the oil in the ground but also preserve a biodiverse forest at the meeting place of the Andes, the Amazon, and the Equator. Plus the added bonus of not destroying the place in which several groups of indigenous peoples still live and have little contact with the outside world.

Their goal is to sell carbon credits which will ideally make as much money as the oil revenue might have made. Of course there are lots of problems to be figured out, like how to quantify the amount of carbon credits they can sell and how to make sure that forever is really forever. But maybe its a sign that we might yet find a way not to drown ourselves in a sea of melting ice caps.

Sure everything will cost more with a big worldwide carbon trading scheme and less oil on the market. But, is driving to the Mall of America to get christmas presents or a cheap flight to Cancun for spring break worth more to you than preserving a rainforest that is a home to untold biodiversity and indigenous peoples that live isolated from the modern world.

Finer, Matt, Remi Moncel, and Clinton N. Jenkins. 2009. Leaving the Oil Under the Amazon: Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT Initiative. Biotropica (10).

Hansen, J., M. Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo, D. L Royer, and J. C Zachos. 2008. Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2, no. 15: 217–231.

Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Persson, F. S Chapin, E. F Lambin, T. M Lenton, et al. 2009. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, no. 7263: 472–475.

Land Use Choices Matter

2009-11-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

Why can't we use solar power to meet all of our power demands? Maybe all those solar panels we would need would just take up too much space. Or maybe not. Wired Science points out that we already use 17 times more land area to feed our pets than it would take to generate enough electricity for the whole US. So maybe it's more about the land use choices we make (or that we don't realize we are making). That's not to say that we should stop feeding pets to generate electricity. We should just take an honest look at how we are using our land now before we decide that we do or do not have enough land to meet our electricity needs with solar power.

The Little Things Matter

2009-10-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

There is a common argument among people who want to make the world a better place. One side says that every little thing matters like a single can in the recycling bin and a gallon of gas saved by walking to the store every day. The other side says that we shouldn't waste our time on the little things and concentration on big changes like changing this policy or stopping that big destructive project.

Well score one for the little things. PNAS just published a paper about carbon emission reductions based on little things like weatherizing your house and drying your clothes on a line rather than a dryer (Dietz et al. 2009). They calculated both the likely emission reduction of these actions and the percentage of the population that are likely to be convinced to do these actions. After adding it all up they estimate that after 10 years these combined actions could lead to a 7.4% reduction in US national emissions. That's huge! They make the point that cap and trade and other big ideas are fine and good but promoting and incentivizing little actions that are taken at the individual or household level can make a big difference too.

In the end, I think this little actions versus big actions argument isn't worth having. We should be doing both to the extent that we can. Little things make us feel good about our contribution on a daily basis and have big effects when added up. Big things are difficult and slow to happen but make a huge contribution when they do. Just don't let anyone tell you that the little things don't matter.

Dietz, T., G. T. Gardner, J. Gilligan, P. C. Stern, and M. P. Vandenbergh. 2009. Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce U.S. carbon emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (10). doi:10.1073/pnas.0908738106.

527F dies for what?

2009-10-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

This story in Science makes my pretty sad and a little angry. Some hunters killed nearly an entire pack of wolves that had been studied for years in Yellowstone. It was a legal hunt or "harvest" as they call it and the first of its kind in a long time. I've always been skeptical about the motivations behind wolf hunting and this seems to confirm my suspicions. Killing this pack doesn't seem to be about protecting livestock or reducing an overpopulation of wolves. I'm sure there is more than one side to the story, but in the end for me it's some hunters destroying a wolf pack for a rush and a good story. All at the expense of many years and many dollars worth of research. It must take a lot of skill and guts to go to the edge of a park and kill wolves that have spent their entire lives around people with cameras instead of guns. Hopefully the silver lining will be people rethinking if and how we hunt wolves.

Anacardiaceae Hates Me

2009-08-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

It all started this past July in the Porcupine Mountains in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I was gathering some firewood after dark one evening behind our campsite and I stumbled into a patch of poison ivy (a member of the plant family Anacardiaceae). A few days later I had a terrible reaction that consisted of a rash on my lower legs that was pretty itchy and really nasty to look at. As that started to heal, (about a week later,) I broke out with hives all over my upper body that were so itchy I couldn't sleep. A trip to the doctor provided me with a course of predisone. As I arrived in Costa Rica at the start of August, both the rash and the hives were going away and everything was fine.

That is until the other day when I went mango hunting near an old fallen down ranch house here in the park. These are mango trees.

Well it turns out that the mango tree is also in the plant family Anacardiaceae. The skin of mangoes as well as leaves and branches of the tree have the chemical urushiol which is what causes a reaction to poison ivy. You don't usually get a reaction from brushing against mango tree leaves. You have to crush them or break a branch or something. So what did I do? I climbed a bunch of mango trees, broke branches, tore leaves, and ate mangoes off the tree without washing them. All of these activities are likely to put one in contact with urushiol. That was a few days ago and today I noticed a little rash on my forearms that looks like poison ivy rash. Worse still, I think it's starting to break out around my mouth. After noticing the rash I thought about what it could be from and made the connection. Now I feel like an idiot. No more mangoes for me!

In other news it rained a lot yesterday. I guess it's the end of the canicula (see below). That did not however stop this frog from hanging out in the shower. Why doesn't he go outside and play in the mud puddles with the other frogs?

I saw this pretty butterfly on these pretty flowers the other day.

I've been in the forest a lot lately measuring my dendrometers. Dendrometers are steel bands I put around the trunks of trees that expand as the trunk grows and allow me to precisely measure the tree's growth. I find a lot of funny insects on my dendrometers and today I found this tiny frog.

That's all for now. If you are someone that prays, please pray that my mango rash doesn't get as bad as my poison ivy rash.

Canicula

2009-08-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

Here in the Costa Rican tropical dry forest their is often a brief dry season in the middle of the rainy season. They call it Canicula which is a reference to the little do star and the dog days of summer. That is definitely what is going on right now. My first few days here were rainy but it hasn't rained significantly since. An old man who lives near us says that it usually ends around August 15 so I'm keeping my eyes on the sky for rain. Anyway, here are a few pictures I took recently.

The other day we went to a research area call Horizontes where they have large plantations of local tree species. There is a huge tower there that I'm guessing they use to look out for forest fires.

The view from the top is impossible to capture with a little camera like mine but here's a hint of what it is like.

While we were there we ran into this little hog-nosed pit viper. This one is pretty small but they say that the little guys have higher concentrations of toxins in their venom than the big snakes (I have no idea if that's true).

On our way back we stopped at the Feria Agricultor (farmers market) in Liberia an bought a bunch of produce. We found this sapote which is a tropical fruit with the texture of an avocado and a sweet flavor that is something like pumpkin pie filling.

Yesterday the battery in the car died. After a few push starts we made it to Liberia today to get buy a new one. Super Baterias seemed like the obvious choice.

Here is an example of the tools of a Costa Rican mechanico. Hacksaw, hammer, vice grips, an old peice of wood. You can fix anything with that stuff.

Well that's it for now. I'll leave you with a picture of what I've been drinking. While Costa Rica has some of the highest biodiversity in the world their beer diversity is quite low. You have Imperial of course. Then Pilsen which tastes just like Imperial. If you want to get really fancy you'll get some Bavaria Dark which taste like the others plus a little hint of caramel. That's it. That's all they have. I'm not complaining though. I can manage just fine with three types of beer (for now).

Back for August

2009-08-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

I got back about a week ago and I haven't taken many pictures yet. Here's a few from this week and a few I never posted from June.

I found this passion flower in my backyard.

This is the snake that almost killed me one morning in June. I went into the back yard after I woke up and noticed him about 3 inches from my bare feet.

People in the midwest complain about mosquitoes, but trust me it's worse in the tropics.

This beautiful moth is laying eggs.

You can eat these ice cream beans (igna edulis) right off the tree!

I don't know what kind of flower this is. Maybe Cucurbitaceae?

These pretty blue mushrooms grow around the local oak trees (Quercus oleoides) here.

Rainy Season

2009-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

The real rains have finally come. That means most everyday it is sunny in the morning and then somewhere between 1 and 5pm it starts raining like crazy. It's difficult to work outside in the pouring rain so I often just hunker down for a few hours and read and write. Everywhere it is muddy now and some puddles never seem to dry up. At least the rain brings the temperature down when it comes. That is always refreshing after a hot day in the forest.

In other news, this guy and all his friends have been eating the hell out of the Guazuma ulmifolia in my forest plots. Their poop is about the size of a corn nut and blankets the ground beneath these trees. If are under the trees that they are munching on you will often get pooped on. But don't worry it's pretty dry and doesn't leave a residue.

Speaking of trees, these trees all want to grow in the same spot. Pretty high local diversity at this point. Let's see, there's a spiny Bombacopsis quinata on the right. The whitish bark belongs to Bursera tomentosa and the other two are both Bursera simaruba.

Here's some more interesting fungi I saw recently. The first one looks pretty standard but the second looks like little flowers growing out of the litter layer.

I thought it might be fun to make a video clip. Obviously my video making skill have a long way to go but here are some ants. First leaf cutter ants carrying flowers down the trunk of the tree in my back yard and then a swarm of army ants in the forest.

Here's the obligatory sunset picture I took on my trip to the beach last weekend. It was a perfect day. Maybe the last without significant rain.

Update

2009-05-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

Here's what I have been doing.

Eating this pichudo aguacate.

Admiring this giant bean pod.

Thinking about fungi.

Watching this coati dig in the leaves for lunch.

Remembering that Jackie takes better pictures of flowers than I do.

Bothering this bug.

Saying "good morning" to the snake on my screen door when I get up.

Swearing at this frog for coming back in my house again and again.

Not letting this toad come in despite his desire to poop on my floor.

Watching it rain.

That's it for now. Everything is fine here. Stay tuned. I'll try to post more often.

Another interesting arrival

2009-05-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

There are always some interesting things living in the cabin when I arrive. This time i found little tootsie roll sized turds all around the house. Who could have made them. I didn't find out until I started washing all of the dishes. This frog was hiding in the frying pan. I don't think tree frog would be a good first meal so I took the frying pan outside and waited for him to leave. Here it looks like he wants to stay.

Later I ate dinner and then of course had to do the dishes again. As I went to set a clean plate on the dish rack this tarantula decided to say hello.

I showed the way to the door with a broom and then took a closer look while he hung out on the screen door.

Overall it wasn't a bad arrival other than the rodents. The next day (today) I went to Palo Verde National park and did a little work. I forgot my camera and I was really disappointed when I saw an entire family of coatis crossing the road in front of me. Maybe next time.

Soil Resources

2008-12-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

Now that I have identified some of the big crises that we face I would like to explore a few of them that I feel are the least known. The loss of soil resources is extremely important but I don't have a good handle on the extent or urgency of the problem. I attended an excellent lecture a few years ago by Ron Amundson called "Are Soils Endangered?" This lecture has stuck in my head and led me to include soils on the list of crisis below. To learn more I scratched the surface of the scientific literature hoping to get some idea of how worried we should be about soil.

First, why do we care about soil? Soil is obviously the core of our agricultural systems, without soil we cannot grow food. Perhaps less obvious is the importance of soil in the carbon and water cycles. Soil carbon is the major terrestrial carbon pool at 2500 gigatons of carbon (Lal 2004). That is 4.5 times more carbon than is stored in all of the living plants of the world. As we degrade and destroy soils we lose carbon to the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change. Soil is also crucial to water purification and storage. Soil protects our waterways from nutrients and pollutants. It protects us from our waterways by slowing and storing water which would otherwise contribute to flooding. It is a critical but often forgotten part of our natural ecosystems, agricultural systems, and infrastructure (hopefully this is all so well known that you are bored by now).

What are we doing that leads to the loss of soil resources? A lot of things damage and destroy soils but mainly growing crops, grazing cattle, and cutting down forest. These activities can lead to wind and water erosion as well as compaction and salination. Other human activities can degrade soils by contamination with toxic pollutants, acidification, and raising or lowering the water table both of which dramatically alter the functioning of soil.

How bad is it? As with everything it's complicated. It looks like agricultural activities have reduced the amount of carbon stored by soils by 60% in the temperate regions and 75% in parts of the tropics (Lal 2004). More than 40% of soils where we grow food are considered "seriously degraded" (Jie et al. 2002). To visualize this I made a map from data I found on the UNEP website (Oldeman et al. 1990). The yellow to red colors represent increasing amounts of land within each polygon that are considered degraded (0-5%, 6-10%, 11-25%, 26-50%, and >50%).

The good news is that we know what to do. We have developed agricultural practices that protect our soil resources while only slightly reducing yields. What's important now is that we see soil as a having a crucial role in solving three important problems; climate change, water resource scarcity, and feeding the 10 billion person world. With these problems in mind we should move from suggesting soil preserving agricultural practices to rewarding and potentially requiring them. With our future ability to feed ourselves is as stake we shouldn't allow farmers to make a little more money this year at the expense of feeding us in years come.

Jie, C., C. Jing-zhang, T. Man-zhi, and G. Zi-tong. 2002. Soil degradation: a global problem endangering sustainable development. Journal of Geographical Sciences 12, no. 2: 243-252.

Lal, R. 2004. Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security. Science 304, no. 5677: 1623-7.

Oldeman, L.R., Hakkeling, R.T.A., Sombroek, W.G., 1990: World Map of the Status of Human-Induced Soil Degradation: An Explanatory Note. International Soil Reference and Information Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Converging Crises of the 21st Century

2008-11-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years I have thought a lot about how there seems to be many global crises converging in the 21st century. A recent paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment got me thinking about this idea again (Cabrera et al. 2008). Many of these problems overlap and complicate each other and so it seems clear that we won’t be able to solve any of these problems without strategies that consider them all. It is frightening to consider a world with where these problems dominate our lives. But perhaps it will be worse if we don’t start thinking about them and just go about our lives hoping for the best. Here’s my list of crises:

1. Climate change
2. Continued human population growth
3. Loss of water resources
4. Loss of soil resources
5. End of oil/Peak oil
6. Collapse of fisheries
7. Resistance to antibiotics/New disease evolution
8. Proliferation of toxic chemicals
9. Mass extinctions/Biodiversity loss

Is there anything I am missing? I’ve done a little bit of searching but haven’t found very many similar lists. Cabrera et al. (2008) survey the faculty of Cornell using an idea they call “concept mapping” in an effort to find and prioritize our most pressing problems. They come up with most of the same crises that I do and a number of additional social and economic problems that are off of my radar like “Corporations have too much influence in governing,” “Global poverty and its effects,” and “The rise of fundamentalist religion” to name a few. Unlike my list, many of their issues are existing problems that we have been dealing with and we may never be rid like “the natural human tendency toward selfishness, self-centeredness, and greed.” They also point to a great lecture from the 1997 AAAS meeting which I had never read (Lubchenco 1998). This lecture is not so much about any specific crises but how we need to reposition science in order to confront problems which are a combination of social, economic, political, and environmental. The other obvious source for this kind of list is the World Watch Institute. This is their bread and butter. Every year they put out a book called State of the World which is scarier reading than any H. P. Lovecraft novel. Another place to look is The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It is slightly less academic but makes for better reading than a list of facts and figures like State of the World. I’m not sure I agree with everything about Kunstler’s perhaps overconfident vision of the future but it definitely worth contemplating.

Let me know if there is something you think must be added to the list above. I’m also interested in other websites, books, and articles which address what crises we will be facing in the future and how best to approach them.

Cabrera, Derek, James T Mandel, Jason P Andras, and Marie L Nydam. 2008. What is the crisis? Defining and prioritizing the world's most pressing problems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6, no. 9:469-475. doi:10.1890/070185.

Lubchenco, Jane. 1998. Entering the Century of the Environment: A New Social Contract for Science. Science 279, no. 5350 (January 23): 491-497. doi:10.1126/science.279.5350.491.

Costa Rica's alright... If you like waterfalls.

2008-08-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

I can count my days left on one hand and I have been trying to fit as much fun and work in a possible in the last few days. I've been walking around a lot exploring more parts of the park that I've never seen before. This park is huge and I always find something really impressive. Here is an awesome waterfall we stumbled upon yesterday.

There is a fairly well known waterfall swimming hole in the park that we visited a few days ago.

It's really beautiful and the water is great.

My coworker was stung the other day by this little guy who was hanging out in in her boots. We find these in our house pretty frequently. This one is about average size. Some are really big and scary.

A while ago we took a quick trip to Costa Rica's capital city San Jose. I forgot to take a lot of pictures but this is one from the rooftop of the hostel where we stayed the night.

My friend took these pictures a while back and recently gave them to me. They illustrate some of the frequent features of our lives. Herding cows off the road with our SUV is a good time.

A wise man once said that the words "turbo" and "wagon" should never be used together. On this day we learned that our spare tire doesn't hold air for that long. We also learned that there is a guy that lives on the far side of the village of Bagatzi that has a air compressor and doesn't mind sharing.

I'm leaving for home soon but I'll keep posting some of the pictures I have taken over the past few months. I have tons of pictures but not much time for blogging. Drop me a line if you want to catch up when I get back.

Hard at Work

2008-07-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

I only have about two weeks left in Costa Rica and I have been busy trying to get as much work done as possible. I have done too many things since my last blog entry to write about so here is a samplings of what I have been up to.

Yesterday I took a break to go to our coworker's son's second birthday party. It was a cowboy themed birthday party and most of the little kids dressed up in cowboy outfits and had little stick horses with them.

Of course there was a piñata. When it finally broke open all of the party attendees, including adults, rushed forth yelling, shoving, and grabbing candy. It was amazing.

When I'm not attending birthday parties I have been in the forest measuring trees and digging holes. Sometimes, if a tree has a lot of funny shaped parts around the bottom, we have to measure the tree high up all of the funny parts. Sometimes that means climbing trees and other times there are now branches to climb on and we have to improvise. I'm thinking about getting a ladder!

As usual we see tons of bugs in the forest. Most of them are pretty harmless and some don't mind if we play with them. Here is my Coworker Daniel with a cicada on his face.

There are lots of other animals in the forest too. Most of them run away when were around while some don't really care about us for some reason. We see big toads all the time. Usually they scare me when they hop right by my feet and I think that it is a snake at first. Look at how fat this one is!

In addition to digging holes and measuring trees I have been exploring lesser traveled parts of the park looking for interesting places to do research and collecting data for my satellite imagery analysis project. We been finding lots of old forgotten roads and occasional long lost patches old forest that was never cut down. Here is an old road through a savanna area of the park.

Here we found this little river gorge that was filled with giant oak trees.

One day I came across this little farm house that the forest was slowly reclaiming. Most of the park I work in use to be little farms and ranches. With the help of many donors the park has bought up a lot of land and it is slowly turning back into the the forest it once was. But this history means that almost every where you go in the park you come across artifacts of its past inhabitants.

The coconut trees that the farmers planted were still producing fruit. I took this one home and opened it up with my machete. It was really good.

It has been raining almost every day for a long time. It is raining right now. Many nights it seems like it rains all night long. Here is me on the front porch of our house taken from the neighbor's porch. If you look closely you can make out the river of water between our house and the neighbors house. This is what it looks like almost every evening. Nothing every seems to dry out and I have gotten use to being damp all of the time.

Last night when we were sitting around the house there was a little earthquake. It was small and short but unmistakable. It was my first earthquake and I might not have realized what was happening if my neighbor had not said "Earthquake!"

Well like I said, I only have a little time left. I'm hoping to do a lot more exploring in the park and I have to do a little bit more data collection work too. It should be a good time and I'll try to keep taking pictures and updating the blog. I'm having fun but I am really looking forward to coming home.

Making new friends in the forest

2008-07-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

While I was installing a dendrometer on a tree today, this butterfly landed right in front of me and proceeded to rub his proboscis all over my dendrometer.

Right after I took that picture he hopped onto my camera and then onto my hand.

A little while later the butterfly left and this curious little monkey showed up.

He climbed down the tree and stared at us.

Then he decided to just hang out and watch us watching him.

But eventually his friends showed up. They had a fight over some fruit and then took off.

That’s it!

Rincón de la Vieja

2008-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we went to the volcano Rincón de la Vieja which means old woman's corner. We first tried to climb to the top of the active crater but didn't quite make it. After the crater we went to visit to a beautiful waterfall.

We arrived early and as always the volcano was covered with huge clouds.

We started up the trail to the crater which goes through a huge forest filled with amazing trees. The most spectacular trees are the strangler figs which envelope other trees and take on bizarre forms.

These two have limbs stretched out to each other and have become one.

The gap in the middle of this tree is about 4 meters high.

This tree's smooth white bark really stands out in the dark forest.

As we got higher up the volcano we entered a new kind of forest with shorter dark trees. The wind was beginning to pick up and the rain was constant. We were in a cloud after all. Sometimes it was just a mist and other times there were short downpours that lasted just a minute or two.

Finally the forest opened up and the trees disappeared leaving only shrubs and grass. We could really feel the wind and the rain was a constant reminder of our being in a cloud.

The view from up their was spectacular. One moment everything would be obscured and we could barely see 15 meters in front of us and the next moment the cloud would shift and the great dark shadow of the volcano would appear above us. It looked really far up there.

Next we had to climb down a treacherous path into a gorge where we could cross a little river. It was scary but beautiful.

The climb out of the gorge was even harder. There were steep slopes that required the use of my long lost rock climbing skills. At two spots someone had hung ropes down to allow people to swing and climb across parts of the trail that had been washed away. I was beginning to think that this might be a bit too dangerous. We made it a bit higher and the trail just got more and more difficult and we were taking pretty serious risks. All the while the wind gusts were strong enough to make us repeatedly lose our balance and the short but frequent downpours continued. We made it far enough to take these pictures but then decided to turn back. None of these shots depict the difficulty of the trail because, as you can imagine, my camera was put away during those parts and both of my hands were busy clinging to the cold volcanic mud.

We hiked all the way back down the volcano not feeling at all disappointed that we had not made it to the top. We had been close and the clouds were so thick that it would have been impossible to see much. Our next task was an easy 5km to a waterfall with a swimming hole. I was thinking how nice it would be to wash off the red mud that was caked onto my legs. A few steps down the trail we saw this awesome three trunk tree.

Next we had to cross another river but fortunately for us there was a bridge this time.

Eventually the forest opened up into a rocky savanna with these huge agave like plants.

We were still quite high up on the side of the volcano and when the trees opened up the view was great.

We eventually made it to the one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen.

As fast as we could, we took off our boots and went swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall. A perfect opportunity to test out my new waterproof camera. Eek! My beard is getting long!

I took this picture while swimming right below the waterfall.

Eventually, after we got all of that red volcanic mud washed off, we put our boots back on and hiked back. I was pretty exhausted after all of that. According to my GPS we only went 20km but the elevation change was over 1000 meters up and down.

Now it is Sunday and were catching up on internet business and cleaning ourselves and the house. This week it is back to work in the forest nothing much new there. I'll try to take some more pictures of interesting bugs. Maybe I'll even get a good shot of a monkey one of these days.

Bugs

2008-06-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

I see a lot of bugs everyday while I'm working in the forest. Usually I just ignore them but sometimes my camera is hand and I take pictures. Here are some of them. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to identify them all and give you some natural history but I study plants and soil.

I'm not sure what these are. They look like a combination of a tailless whip scorpion and a grass hopper. Their about four inches in diameter and are kinda freaky when they crawl down a tree that I am measuring.

These little ladybug like things are having a special bug conference on this leaf.

These wasps are my enemies. They often build their nest underneath large leaves and when I brush up against the leaves the fly out and sting me. Their stings are the most painful experience I've ever had with an insect. It feels like being stabbed with a fork.

Here is a strange but cut shiny bug. There are tons of bugs that have this basic shape but have different coloring. This one has what looks like a silver diamond studded back.

These things are larger than my thumb and in the right light are almost impossible to distinguish from leaves. I hardly every notice them.

Here is a fuzzy little catepillar. I see these guys all the time and they always make me smile.

This is an immense amount of caterpillar fras. Fras is a fancy word for poop. There is a huge defoliation event occurring right now in the oak forests were we work. Everything in the forest is covered with this stuff (including me).

Here is the responsible party for all of that fras. There are hundreds of these things on the oak trees right now. The fall off onto me while I am working and are constantly crawling up my legs. The worst is when I feel a bug on the back of my neck and swat it thinking it is a mosquito only to realize much too late that it was one of these fuzzy little things. Yuck!

Here is a scary mommy spider with all of her young.

This is a super camouflaged inchworm.

That is all the bugs I have time for right now. I'm busy with the same old work I have already mentioned. Digging holes and measuring trees. Everything is going well and I am having fun even though I am covered in insect bits and have caterpillars crawling down my shirt.

Update

2008-06-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened over the past week. We have been running around sending emails and making phone calls trying to get the right chemicals for one of our projects. This kind of logistics work is always the most frustrating. I’ve been busy getting more dendrometers installed and I get faster every day. A new member of our team arrived and we started a new litter composition project of hers. Here I am doing the all important job of standing in one spot for half an hour holding some strings.

To get this project we had to drive to Palo Verde National Park which is a few hours south. The road is always kind of a mess. At one point we tried to take a short cut and found ourselves at a dead end on a muddy washed out road in the middle of the largest sugar cane field I’ve ever seen. Here are a few pictures of the drive but I don’t have many because I was busy driving through giant puddles of mud and crossing small rivers. Among the many obstacles were big trucks on tiny roads.

And as soon as you get around one there is often another.

There are tons of beautiful little houses along the road.

I didn’t have time to take pictures in Palo Verde because we were so busy but I’ll be spending a week there soon and I promise that I will take lots of pictures. By the way, here is the trusty vehicle we drive. It’s a Hyundai Galloper. They ship used Gallopers directly to Costa Rica from Korea. Ours still had Korean candy wrappers on the floor when we got it. Some of the doors don’t open and the speedometer doesn’t work but for the most part it gets the job done.

This weekend we did some carpentry around the house. This is going to be a new screen door.

Then we went to the monument in Santa Rosa National Park. This monument commemorates a famous battle where the Costa Rican army defeated the American mercenary William Walker. I don’t really know the story; you’ll have to look it up.

The view from the top is breathtaking.

After the monument we went on a hike through the forest where I saw some pretty trees and this green lizard.

Just for fun, here is a picture of me falling into a river. I thought I could cross without getting wet by hopping from rock to rock. I was wrong! Don’t worry I’m ok. Just a little wet.

Now I must get ready for another week of work.

Playa Naranjo

2008-06-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we decided to take the long hike to Playa Naranjo. A famous and remote beach with big surf and a giant rock offshore called Witch's Rock. According to my GPS it turned out to be a 19 mile walk when it was all said and done. My legs still hurt.

Walking to Naranjo we traveled through many of the parks varied ecosystems, only a few of which I have pictured below. Our first stop was a little side trail called Sendero de los Patos (Trail of the Ducks). There were no ducks but there was a beautiful waterfall. This is the scene just above the waterfall.

At the end of Sendero de los Patos is a beatiful look out where you can see all the way down to the cliff that overlooks the beach.

Later back on the road I almost stepped on this mantis.

Another side trail leads to another lookout. At this spot we could see the beach and the Witch's rock that looks tiny from here. Below this trail is a 250 meter drop to the lowlands forest. This steep climb was the hardest part of the hike. Especially when we were coming back.

The forest at the bottom of the hill is a huge gallery forest with giant trees covered with vines and epiphytes.

The forest is strangely inhabited by thousands of bright blue and red crabs that hide in little holes in the soil if you approach them. This picture isn't that great but imagine the entire forest floor covered with these strange little creatures.

Sometimes you encounter a crab far from his hole and he has to try to defend himself. While it may look like he wants a hug this is the crab's aggressive posture.

The Mangrove swamps that occur on the flat lowlands between the forest and the beach.

Panaramic pictures of Playa Naranjo. It is huge and was completely deserted when we were there.

The famous Witch's Rock.

After all of that we had to walk back the way we came. It was an exhausting hike back but we had some cold Imperial beers waiting for us in the fridge back at our house and I had the best night of sleep since I've been here.

Dendrometros de bandas

2008-06-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth full day here and I feel a bit like this tree. I am still split between my life at home in Minnesota and my work and life here in Costa Rica. But I’ve been working hard and trying to think about my research rather than thinking about my state of mind. My work is still its preliminary stages. I am figuring out how to do things and how to speed up the process so that I can get something significant done before I leave. The first part of the project is a lot of band dendrometers. These are little metal strips that go around a tree with a spring attached to them. As the tree grows the metal strip expands and by measuring the amount that the strip expands I can estimate how much the tree is growing.

My plan is to install these little gadgets on 700 or so trees and return every so often to check on them. Each one has to be cut specifically to fit each tree which means that I am out in the forest all day with a tool belt full of tools, springs, and metal tape.

Being in the field can be frustrating and even painful at times but there is always something interesting to see in the forest. This is a strangler fig trying to take down a huge old oak tree.

This little tree is being dwarfed by its epiphytic friend.

Tonight is Friday which doesn’t mean much here in the park. Maybe I’ll have two beers tonight instead of one. Maybe I’ll stay up late until 10pm and tomorrow maybe I’ll sleep in past 6 am. This weekend we are going to take some long hikes across the park, which is huge. I’ll take a lot of pictures so check back soon.

Arrival

2008-06-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

Things aren’t really off to a great start but I haven’t lost hope. I specifically chose the early flight (which meant waking up at 2:30am to go to the airport) so that I would arrive at our house before dark. Arriving before dark is important because the house gets real dirty when left alone and the first thing we do when we arrive is clean. Cleaning is much easier during the day and the sun sets around 6pm. I chose a flight which put us on the ground in Costa Rica at noon. But, due to some communication errors, our ride didn’t show up until three and a half hours later. Buy time we went to the store to buy food and drove all the way to our house the sun was beginning to set. Like good little troopers we didn’t let this get us down and started unpacking and cleaning as it got darker and darker. My first step was to sweep out the debris from under and around my bed and who do I discover but this guy.

He was so big and fuzzy that I couldn’t bring myself to kill him and I just swept him into the dust pan, took him outside, and flung him as hard as I could away from the house. Hopefully he won’t be back soon. Then I went back to my cleaning only to discover a scorpion in the opposite corner of my room from where I found the spider. I hate scorpions.

We eventually got the place pretty cleaned up and made some pasta and drank some Costa Rican beer which helped us sleep a little better. Now we just have to get organized and get to work on what we came here to do.

Welcome

2008-05-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

I will use this blog to keep people updated on my life and work in Costa Rica. I expect I will be able to update it at least once a week. If I don't have time to write much I will try to keep it interesting with a lot of photos. I leave for Costa Rica in the first week of June and will be back in the first week of August.