Thirty Days to Go!

It is hard to believe that in one month I will be snuggled back at home in Pittsburgh, helping my mom in the garden and cooking veggies from the farmers market. And it is hard to believe that I have spent almost five months in the tropics. And it is a bit stressful to think about the lengthy To-Do List that Chris and I need to finish before I leave! So time has flown by since I got on the plane in snowy Pittsburgh last February with a sore belly from the appendectomy. The last bit of my Costa Rican adventures promise to be very busy and marvelous. I know this month will fly by, just like the last five have, so I will do myself to savor the pineapples, bromeliads, and toucan calls in the morning.

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Just returned from another stint up in Las Alturas. This time, Chris and I picked up an extra companion and field assistant. Kimberly stumbled into the community of Las Cruces researchers serendipitously when we ran into each other in town. Since then, she has been helping out on various projects and drinking coffee with us in the library. She ended up in San Vito with a wonderful host family after similarly serendipitous meetings while she was traveling through Costa Rica after her study abroad program finished up in May. Kim is fantastic to have around, partially from her research experience as an undergrad in the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources and partially because of her general hilarity. The three of us had a great time laughing while measuring seedlings or trying to cook pasta out in the woods. What a great trip!



The fieldwork focused on measuring seedlings in the various exclosure treatments. Chris wants to seed how the prescence or absence of different mammals--peccaries, agoutis, and small rodents--affects plant recruitment, or how much seedlings grow, how likely they will survive to maturity, and how many seeds are predated. The measurements that we are taking now will be the baseline for when Chris returns in the spring. He will be able to seed how much the seedlings have grown inside and outside of the exclosures and how many seedlings are missing inside and outside of the exclosures. And measuring seedlings is very tedious--and possibly painful when some barbed wire is thrown into the mix. Several more of our trips will be dedicated to measuring seedlings.