Professor Troy Abel from Huxley College of the Environment and his students share their insights on ecological citizenship, political biogeography, and immersions in one of the most biologically intense places on the planet. Costa Rica is translated as rich coast, a name originating from Spanish conquistadors who mistakenly thought the land was filled with gold. Many now recognize that Costa Rica’s riches are more green than gold with more than 4 percent of the world’s estimated biodiversity. Costa Rica has universal health care, a longer life expectancy than the U.S., and no military. Only by expanding our attention to all of these facets can one begin to see “Ecotopia’s Prism,” or Costa Rica’s intersections of ecology, economy, and culture fostering and inhibiting sustainability.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Tengo un excellente tiempo

Tengo un excellente tiempo!

Today I woke up about 5am and prepared for field work. I am on the team studying birds in Carara National Park and we will continue our work at Parque Nacional de Corcovado (Corcovado National Park). For breakfast I had something that resembled Cocoa Pebbles as well as some coffee.

For field work we had a site selected about 20 minutes from our biological station about 10 meters off of the trail. We have to where our rubber boots for protection since we are off the trail so as not to be bitten by the Fer De Lance which is a poisonous snake. Our site was selected because we wanted to monitor birds in a canopy layer with medium density. We had already done a low density and will do a high density tomorrow. The team monitors number of individual birds as well as number of different species. To do this we use a microphone that rests on a tripod, a recorder, headphones, a densiometer to measure canopy density, and our notebook to do a point count of the number of birds we here for a 10 minute period. In the evening we have students in other study groups listen to our recording and have them note how many birds and how many species they can hear. Half the students will listen at Carara and the other half will listen at Corcovado.

In other news, we went on a boat tour in the morning and observed some crocodiles as well as some fascinating birds. Upon returning to the station we saw a sloth right by our biological station and soon after we saw an anteater! He was pretty awesome. I also spent some time reading Trouble in Paradise about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. For lunch I had a ham and cheese sandwich with some chips and salsa.

Nothing but good times here in Costa Rica. Right now we are at an Internet café in the town of Quebrada Genado. I will blog later. Pura Vida!

Mitch Olson  

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