Day 3: Fridge Breaks :P

Thursday we started with a historical lecture from our director Jill, who has been with the El Verde station since 1994. She talked about the radioactive experiments that were conducted in the 60's, and paved the way to the creation of this station. She then introduced the research we will be doing here to the rest of the people here at the station; censusing the growth of the tree populations within a 16-hectare plot to assess growth patterns after hurricane damage and natural growth patterns (with a little land use on the side). It was really beneficial to hear this information again, but unfortunately I am only a lot sleepy and can't remember everything :P

After the lecture, we had our first day in the field. What did I do today? Just walked around a beautiful rain forest :) We spent a couple of hours learning different tree species, as we will need to be able to identify trees fairly quickly in the field during the actual census. We got through 26 species in the first round. That would sound like a lot, if we didn't have over 130 species total in the plot. WOO! Keep on trucking. After a quick break for lunch, we came back to the field in order to practice the protocol for the census. We each had a chance to write information, take measurements such as DBH (diameter at breast height), and to identify trees. We talked a lot about different situations to watch out for, and what to do if they arise. With all of the information in our protocol sheets and all of the help that Jill, Alejandro and Chris have been giving us, we will definitely be successful in our data collection.

After our work was done, we decided to take a walk down to the waterfall about 5 minutes up the road. It was so beautiful when we walked passed it to get to the parrots (none of which we saw, for those who are wondering), that we had decided to go back and climb on the rocks. Once we got up there, Rachel and Tuber (Mark Baumgarter) found a path to climb up through the woods that surrounded the waterfalls. It was a pretty steep climb, but it was surrounded by really amazing foliage and of course an amazing waterfall. Plus, climbing is always great when you're climbing with friends. On the way down, we practically had to slide on our butts, it was so steep. But, we made it, and we make it all in one piece. Once at the bottom, Ed waved us all over to the other side of the bridge. He pointed down, and lo and behold, there was a girl playing her trumpet on the side of the river. How he heard it over the roar of the water I will never know, but it was so cool. She was very good, and it seems like a good idea to me if you're working on playing louder--play louder than a rushing river!

We then headed back to make dinner and relax for the night. When we got done eating, a couple of the REU students asked us if we had known when the fridge had turned off. We had noticed that it hadn't been very cold, but we hadn't even started to think that it had actually shut down. So we spend the next few minutes trying to figure out what to do with our food that needed to be kept cold (the fridge that broke down was the size of at least 4 normal fridges, and was practically full). After that, we played the "do we remember anything from the plant ID's we learned today" game. I am so not ready for this. But, I also got to play some guitar, and that is always a good day :)