Monteverde

Okay, here is the dish on my trip to Monteverde last week:

After the windfarm we trekked over to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. So far, this has definitely one of my favorite spots.

As I mentioned before, Monteverde (as you can guess by the name) is located along a mountain chain Costa Rica. It is a tropical rainforest that is usually very moist because there are frequently clouds hanging right above or on top of the canopy. The vegetation is so thick that 38% of moisture never reaches the forest floor, but instead stays in the canopy and on trees. This really moist condition (along with dirt that has settled in the canopy and on tree trunks as well) allows a lot of epiphytes to grow. Epiphytes are plants that grow on top of other plants without needing to extend roots into the soil. Orchids and mosses are examples. I had no idea such things existed until this trip – there are some crazy, sci-fi like things that happen in tropical rain forest…in a later post I will tell you about the strangler fig (I didn’t manage to take a picture of one while I was in Monteverde).

Academically, the biggest project I had at Monteverde was a Tropical Ecology Field Exercise. Basically, my partner and I created a study to conduct at Monteverde. The study was by no means ground breaking (or supposed to be – we ended up investigating whether the odor of wild black pepper plants affected herbivory), but it was very cool to be doing scientific data collection in Monteverde instead of just doing touristy things. Although, sometimes I wished I had had more time to take my time walking through the forest.

Okay, picture time:

Epiphytes growing up a tree

At the continental divide, meaning the ridge of the mountain where on one side the rain shadow effect occurs and a different climate occurs on the other

Another suspension bridge overlooking the canopy. Slowly but surely conquering my fear of heights. 

Wind Farm

Hi everyone,

Sorry it has been a while – I had a lot of school work this week.

Last week I went to Monteverde, which is probably one of the most popular places in Costa Rica to go. It is a rainforest located at a relatively high elevation (about 1,8000 meters about sea level) along a string of mountains roughly located along the center of the country.

I will talk more about Monteverde in my next post because, like last time, we made a pit stop. This time at a wind farm.

Compared to the States, Costa Rica gets an immense amount of their electricity from renewable sources. 90% of electricity is renewable, breaking down into 80% hydroelectric, 15% geothermal, 5% wind and ~1% solar. Energy in general, however, is not quite as impressive. About 33% of all energy in Costa Rica is renewable. Like many countries, the Costa Rican  transportation sector relies almost exclusively on oil. Despite this, I was so surprised that Costa Rica got so much of it’s electricity and energy renewably. Moreover, Costa Rica is only producing ¼ of it’s renewable energy potential. The U.S. , which is the second largest energy consumer (China recently passed us, but remember how much larger the Chinese population is than the U.S.’s. So, not something to be proud of since per capita Chinese consumption is much lower than the U.S.) only generates about 8% of their energy from renewables.

I would like to discuss more about energy, but for now I will just put in some facts about wind energy (which you probably already know):

Pros to wind:

Obviously wind energy has very low/negligible greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Also, of all energy sources, wind has the lowest operating and construction costs

Cons:

However, wind is intermittent and per unit area is not nearly as powerful as a coal fired power plant. The wind farm we saw generated about 3 MW, while a coal power plant generate several hundred MW over the same time period.

I’m especially interested in energy and hope to maybe do my Directed Research on Costa Rica’s energy sources. Unfortunately, this post is getting a little lengthy, so hopefully I will return to this topic soon.

Okay, here are pictures!

Views from the wind farm

Me gazing in wonder...with my super cool hard hat. 

Views of more wind turbines in the distance

More views from the wind farm. You can see a hydroelectric dam in the distance. 

La Tirimbina

After leaving the Chiquita Farm, we made it to the La Tirimbina National Park on the eastern side of the country. La Tirimbina and the surrounding area is climatically pretty different from Atenas – it's much more hot, humid and the mosquitoes are slightly relentless. Nevertheless, it was a great trip. We all stayed at a lodge (this includes professors and faculty), went for a hike through the National Park and had classes in an outdoor classroom near the lodge. La Tirimbina National Park is your classic tropical rainforest – lots of thick, diverse vegetation. I’ve included lots of pictures with captions:

Views from the lodge we stayed in at La Tirimbina. There is a little green roof at the bottom of the picture, this was another lodge we occupied. 

My Tropical Ecology professor holding a bird. He set up nets that biologists use to safely catch birds during the night, and he showed us this one in the morning. It looks like he is holding the bird tightly, but he was actually very gentle and was able to show us very interesting aspects of bird anatomy. He let the bird peck him saying something (half-jokingly I think) along the lines of "I think it's better for their stress level if I let him just attack my finger".  That night we went to a forested area by a creek and looked at frogs. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. I also wasn't able to hold any because I had put on insect repellent that day, which will kill the frogs when you touch them. I wasn't too bent out of shape about it - it was something I might rather watch than do. Hopefully later in the program I will feel better about touching amphibians. 

Our outdoor classroom at La Tirimbina. I took this during a break. I didn't post a picture, but there is a beautiful creek behind me. 

Us in La Tirimbina National Park. Yes, that is me clinging for dear life on the huge suspension bridge. I believe it is one of the longest ones in Costa Rica, and possibly Central America. The river pictured flows from Costa Rica into Nicaragua.

Big leaves - something you get a lot of in Costa Rica. This is actually by the outside classroom, not in the park. 

In the understory of La Tirimbina National park - Note how much light the canopy blocks out. I just learned today that it blocks or reflects 99.5% of incoming solar radiation from reaching the forest floor. 

Unreal vines that grow in the forest. 

A mediocre picture of a Howler Monkey. 

¡Chiquita, Chiquita!

 Hi all –

I recently returned from my first field trip away from the center. We went to the Northeastern edge of the country (close to the Caribbean coast and a few dozen kilomenters from the Nicaraguan border) to a National park called La Tirimbina. Along the way we stopped at a Chiquita banana farm, which this post is dedicated to - I’ll discuss my experience at Tirimbina in a subsequent post.

Before I begin describing what I saw at Chiquita, I just want to forewarn that at the time of this post I’m including information that I have recently learned, but I realize that my opinions and impressions may change as I become more involved in my course work and am exposed to more agricultural systems in Costa Rica, so I may return to this and other topics to include more information and different perspectives. Basically, I’m new to this, people.

Banana farms were very important to the Costa Rican economy (as with other agricultural practices, such as pineapple and coffee farms) during the late 19^th and early 20^th century. However, as I learned quickly, banana farms have a horrible reputation in Costa Rica (and Central America in general) for extreme deforestation, horrifically abusive labor practices and even removing elected officials from the government. The atrocities of the Banana industry in Costa Rica were most famously revealed in ­­­a book in the 1950’s, which I can’t remember right now, but will ask my professor and post back soon.

Chiquita (formerly known as United Fruit Company) is one of the fruit companies (along with Dole, formerly known as Standard Fruit Company) with such a reputation. Recently, many banana farms have been trying to redeem themselves, hence the particular banana farm we visited which offered a talk about the socially and environmentally beneficial practices they were adopting  followed by a tour of the farm by a biologist. Very mushy, rainbows and butterflies type of thing. I will say that both of our tour guides were very honest about the horrible reputations of Chiquita and in a way I admired them as they have sacrificed some good standing in their careers to try to reform a previously corrupt and destructive corporation.

Based on what I saw at the banana farm and learned in my Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Development class (a mouthful I know…) Chiquita was practicing philanthropy, not Corporate responsibility – all of their initiatives such as building forest corridors to connect ecosystems that were  fragmented by banana farms, educating women and only employing workers over 18, were not necessarily company wide practices, and in my opinion, probably a rarity.

Either way, I’ve recently become very fascinated and curious about where food comes from, so it was interesting to see. Below are pictures :

A banana bunch - note that it is known as a banana plant and not a banana tree because bananas are actually herbs (the world's largest). The purple appendage at the bottom is the male component of the plant, which is removed during the harvesting process. There is also a time during the plant's growth where workers have to put in paper inserts to prevent the latex, which naturally leaks from the banana plant, from staining the bananas. Banana cultivation is VERY complicated - there are over twenty intricate steps that must be taken to properly grow and harvest them.  The blue bag over the bananas is composed of 1% insecticide and is designed to protect the bananas from the elements and pests.

Us entering the Chiquita farm. I've forgotten the exact area, but it is several thousand hectares. The passage way we walking through is used by the farmers to move harvested banana bunches out of the farm and to the cleaning/packaging station which was located behind us - essentially the banana bunches were pulled along the spine of the iron over-hanging by a belt attached to a farmer's waist. Farmers also had wooden planks attached to the spine that they would use like a seat and propel themselves through the over pass, which looked really fun (of course, I doubt it compensates for the intensive labor of working 8 hour days on a banana farm). I had a video of the farmers moving through, but the server wouldn't have any of it.

The banana farm from the outside - once you walk into it you can't see anything but banana plants. I'm not sure if you can make it out in the picture but there are different colored strings tied from one plant to another. These have several purposes. The main one being that they indicate which week the plants were planted (there was a very elaborate system of taking the daughter off-shoots of one banana plant and relocating it a few meters away to creates it's own off-shoots. Basically banana plants can continuously just regenerate clones if properly managed for disease etc). 

Finally here...with spotty internet...

Hi All!

Unfortunately, it has been difficult to get online and post to the blog since I arrived in Costa Rica as the internet connection is very unreliable and generally weak. I will probably keep this post relatively short and provide a longer one when I return from an upcoming field trip. Generally all of my posts will probably detail larger trips, although I will also try to dedicate at least one post to my day-to-day life style here at the center in Atenas.

Here are some pictures I took my first morning here. All I can say is that so far it is wonderful!

Right outside the front door of the dorms - a row of hammocks over looking mango and orange trees as well as mountains and hills in the distance. Iguanas also climb around in the beams, which is not as charming.

One of the orange trees I saw during our tour of the center and it's gardens and farms on our first day.

Down a long, windy trail away from the center towards more citrus orchards, farms and a home-made soccer field. Note that it is the dry season, which is why this may not seem as green as you may imagine Costa Rican terrain. Beautiful nonetheless!

The center's chickens! Some of the best eggs I've ever eaten, and I love that the center gets so much, if not all, of their food locally.

Okay,  I'm terrified the server will crash before I post this, so I'll end this here.  I hope to get a more detailed post about the program and my impressions and experiences soon!