The End

Hello! This is my final blog post, covering the past two weeks. Also, it happens to my final undergraduate assignment ever! I wanted to reflect on the experience of the last two weeks as a whole, as well as cover my research project. The Monday before last, I started to come down with a rough sinus infection. I was laid up in bed for a couple days. At this point, we were at La Foresta, a nice hotel in Manuel Antonio. It definitely was not the worst place to recover, and it even had air conditioning! The day after I started feeling sick, the class went to get COVID-19 tests before moving to our next location. We all tested negative! At the very same clinic, I was able to get some medicine cheaply and easily. We just asked for an antibiotic and nasal decongestants and were given them. The employees at the pharmacy were really helpful and it ended up only costing around twenty U.S. dollars. I found it interesting that I could just walk into a pharmacy and buy antibiotics without a prescription. I get sinus infections quite often so that would come in handy back at home. However, I do have mixed feelings about it. Although I needed the medicine and I was able to get it cheaply, I think that antibiotics are under prescriptions only in the U.S. for a good reason. The medicine helped, and I felt better eventually. The sinus infection persisted for about a week, but I tried my best to resist the painful sensation in my head. Later that night, there was a severe thunderstorm at La Foresta. While we were eating dinner, a torrential downpour began. The thunder was the loudest I’ve heard in my life. It actually hurt my ears at one point. The storm was so close to us that at one point, there was hardly a second between the lightning and thunder. The overhead awning above where we were eating dinner began leaking. We left dinner early because some of the rooms started to flood! Luckily, my room didn’t flood, but others weren’t as fortunate. The water around the hotel was nearly knee deep at one point. We managed to get everyone in a room for a night.  After La Foresta, the group headed to Piro Biological Station, located on the Osa peninsula. After getting some really great lunch along the beach, the class split up to take taxis to Piro. The road to our destination was so intensely bumpy that taking the bus to Piro wasn’t really in the question. I’ve never been on a bumpier ride in my life! I still had a nice time during the ride though. The scenery was beautiful, and the bumps were kind of fun. To our left was the expansive ocean, and to our right were green pastures. Apparently, this area of the peninsula had been cleared to make way for agriculture some years back. Once we got to Piro Biological Station, we were shown our rooms. There was a scorpion in our bathroom! We settled in and had dinner and class discussion. I was still feeling pretty ill, so I rested some more. The next day we were told about sea turtles on the Osa Peninsula. They’ve been facing threats from poachers and excessive predation. I thought it was interesting to learn that sea turtles are prehistoric animals. They’ve managed to survive and thrive for hundreds of thousands of years and now humans are threatening them more than ever. It goes to show that human impacts on some animals and ecosystems are actually more dramatic than a mass extinction. After the talk, the rest of the group went to the beach to look for sea turtles and nests. I hung back to try to continue recovering from my sinus infection. Unfortunately, the group was not able to find any turtles or eggs. After lunch, we had time to do field work for our research projects. My partner and I were looking into how CO2 levels changed within the forest and if there might be a correlation between the occurrences of reptiles in the area. I hypothesized that carbon dioxide levels would be lower as you went deeper into the forest. Trees, and forests to that extent, are incredibly important for carbon sequestration. In case you don’t know (I didn’t until this past year), carbon sequestration is the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it elsewhere. In the case of plants, they sequester carbon because they need it as an input of photosynthesis (Clear, 2019). On the equator, the constant and direct sunlight pretty much puts photosynthesis into overdrive. I was pretty confident that we would see lower levels of CO2 and more reptiles as we went deeper into the forest. To test this, we found trails that went progressively deeper into denser forest. We completed a line transect or rather, we stopped every 50 meters to count reptiles and other air quality metrics: CO2, shade cover, particulate matter, number of reptiles seen, and unique species seen. We ended up doing three transects at Piro. What we found was quite interesting. It seemed like CO2 levels were actually very variable, and if anything, were higher within the forest! We came up with a theory for that, but I’ll talk about that later. We saw a ton of reptiles, nearly 70 over our three transects at Piro!

So…it didn’t really look like there was a correlation between reptiles seen and CO2 levels in a particular area. However, there appeared to be a correlation between shade coverage and reptiles seen. Typically, there was a pattern of more shade coverage as we went deeper into the forest. There was also a pattern of more reptiles being seen when the shade coverage was complete or mostly complete. I’ll talk more about the research project when I cover the data we received at our next site. I’m not sure what else to say about Piro Biological Station. The biodiversity was impressive, the researchers were nice, and there was nowhere else on the trip where I felt so connected to nature. A lot of the students played a soccer game on our last day there. Unfortunately I had to sit out because of my sinus infection, not that I’m some sort of soccer superstar anyway! The goals were comically small, like 1/7 of an actual soccer goal! That made the game pretty hilarious. Everyone really struggled to make the goal in while I just sat and laughed. We got up bright and early to head to Las Cruces Biological Station. It’s run under the same administration that ran La Selva. I thought that was pretty neat! I liked La Selva a lot so I was looking forward to heading to another station run by OTS. Oh, I was also looking forward to feeling the cooler climate of the mountains, Piro was hot! By the time we got to Las Cruces, it had been about two weeks since anyone had the chance to do laundry. We were mega musty. There were rumors stirring that a gourmet chef had residence at Las Cruces. After a long and rainy drive, we made it to Las Cruces. Stepping out of the bus and feeling the cool air was so refreshing. The living accommodations were really cozy, I felt like the group was able to become closer through the shared common space.

The first day at Las Cruces, practically right after we arrived, we had a meeting with some members of the Ngäbe indigenous community. They explained their struggles to preserve their language and culture through educating their youth. They receive little accommodations from the Costa Rican government. The members told us about how it’s hard to organize education programs when the opportunities to require resources for them can be difficult sometimes. They also asked our class questions too. They were mainly interested in our area of study and at what point we were in our schooling. I think I remember one of the Ngäbe members commenting on the diverse fields of study within the twenty of us. After the conversation, I felt frustrated yet hopeful. I think that simply bringing awareness to indigenous struggles is an important aspect of helping make things right between capitalistic society and indigenous communities.  Although the language barrier made it difficult for me to speak directly to them, there’s so much that I wish I could’ve said. In the end, we were able to raise over 700 USD for the Ngäbe. I really hope it is something that will help them get some of the resources they want and need to preserve their language and culture for future generations. Shifting focus, Dr. Libby split us into groups and asked us to read chapters from the book called 6 Degrees. It essential overviews what climatic changes will happen for each degree raise in global average temperature over time due to anthropogenic factors. Each chapter discusses the changes of each degree of a 6-degree increase. The book also talks about the cultural and societal effects of the increase in average global temperature. These include climatic events that will harm and displace people. Heat waves, droughts, rises in sea level, and more intense storms threaten vulnerable groups. It’s no secret that human use of fossil fuels and the emissions that are produced as a result are responsible for anthropogenic climate change via increases in global average temperatures. This is one of the reasons I have been so interested in carbon sequestration the past few months, and why I chose to make it a main focus of my research project. If human-caused emissions could be absorbed, or even destroyed, it can help slow down climate change. There have been concepts of carbon capture technologies, but I’ve got to say, I’m not sure I trust them. This webpage overviews the process well: https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work The reason that I am weary about carbon capture technology is due to the unknown nature. I fear that somehow, and I’m not the only one, the problem could be made worse by directly interfering with greenhouse gasses in the air and atmosphere. For this reason, I think that forests are our best hope for carbon sequestration. Forests within the U.S. sequester about 16% of the carbon emissions from our nation (Norman, 2020). Considering the fact that the U.S. is a main contributor of emissions, this 16% sequestered should not be overlooked. I am of the belief that reforestation efforts alongside clean energy initiatives are a viable path towards environmental sustainability without major compromises of technological innovations and comfort. Anyway, working our way back to my research project, what did we find? After doing two more transects at Las Cruces, we found some shocking data. On our transects, one of which was 2 km instead of our regular 1 km, we found zero reptiles. The trend of carbon being higher within the forest was maintained, but not to as intense of a degree as seen at Piro. It was baffling to us at first. We had seen nearly 70 lizards at Piro, and now we’re seeing none over the same amount of distance? We figured that the difference lay within the types of forests of each site. The forest at Piro was a primary forest, meaning it had not been disturbed by human actions. In contrast, the forest in which we completed our transects at Las Cruces was a secondary logged forest. Secondary forests are those that have been “disturbed by human activity in one way or another” (Kaltimber, 2019). Human disturbance has the potential to greatly disturb ecosystems, as illustrated well within the secondary forests of Las Cruces.

Although we did not find any reptiles, we did collect valuable CO2 data at Las Cruces. We figured that the reason CO2 levels are higher within the forests, despite forests being excellent carbon sinks, was due to “leaf litter.” Leaf litter is essentially dead leaves covering the ground of the forests. It can be found in pretty much any forest. As they decompose, dead leaves release previously sequestered CO2 into the air. In my opinion, this is likely why CO2 levels were actually higher within the forest than they were outside of it.

In spite of our CO2 readings, I think that the forests we completed transects are still sequestering carbon at a net positive rate. The CO2 resulting from leaf litter is likely being reabsorbed into plant matter within the forest as an input of the near constant photosynthesis in tropical forests. All in all, I was happy with the results that we were able to receive in such a short amount of time.
Reflecting on the trip, there’s a few important key concepts that I’d learned that I would like to share. Climate change has yet to reach a point where a huge number of individuals are detrimentally effected. However, if left on its current trend, carbon emissions will undermine global health and safety. The scientific consensus is nearly unanimous on this. Although the current trend won’t inconvenience everyone in the near decades, it will harm vulnerable groups. Groups that live in areas that are near sea level or subject to drought, will suffer the consequences first. The U.S. is historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse gasses and ironically, projected to be one of the last to suffer climatic consequences. Keep this in mind…it’s important to think critically about what can be done, and how to take control of the situation out of the hands of for-profit agencies. Thanks for reading!