Kathryn Jouvenat's Web Page

I teach honors biology and a 9th grade integrated science course at Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado I attended the WWNFF Environmental Science Institute in Costa Rica, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), during the summer of 1999. I was interested in seeing how science is done experimentally in the field, and in relating current environmental findings to the classroom. We visited three Organization of Tropical Studies (OTS) Biological Stations thoughout the 3 week course of our Institute. We spent 5 days at each station, which included La Selva, Las Cruces, and Palo Verde Biological Stations. A large amount of current environmental research and global concerns were presented to us in the form of lecture and field trips. We actively worked with ongoing research at all three stations, and developed classroom activites in environmental science. Check out what we experienced, learned and developed in Costa Rica! If you have any questions, my e-mail address is: jouvenat@d20.co.edu.

	One of my projects was testing how mass and length of "jumping" tree frogs affect speed. Here's a picture of A. challidryus and A.saltator sleeping in a container before the jumping experiment. They are nocturnal, and parachute to the swamp during their breeding season. Read about more about the experiment on our project page.
	"Frog on the pad!" A. saltator being encouraged to jump. We found that frogs with more mass reach the ground faster, perhaps giving the more massive frogs a reproductive advantage..

Summaries of journal entries

"La Selva is an incredible experience! The lowland tropical rain forest surrounds you with sights and sounds that are so strange and wild. One feels a kind of primitive attraction to it. The forest envelops you with a life-force. Our encounters with real, living, breathing plants and animals was thrilling. Even one encounter with a small fer-de-lance snake was on the edge of the dangerous and the beautiful. The night hikes through the primary forest and the swamps were fascinating - another world of life appeared."

"Las Cruces seems pretty tame, like a garden, after La Selva. We were surrounded by the Wilson Botanical Garden, which is beautiful. We hiked through a secondary pre-montane rain forest. There are some shreds of primary forest at the tops of mountains, and running down the valleys. We studied hummingbird behavior for our project. I see these little birds with a new awareness. Survival is very tough, whether you are a hummingbird guarding a tree or the interloper."

"Costa Rica is a land of many contrasts. The dry tropical forest of Palo Verde reminds me of forests in the United States, except for the palm trees here and there. The wetlands are similar to ones at home, except for the species and diversity one observes. Howler monkeys wake us up in the morning, and one morning they were just a few meters away. We watched them move through the trees and eat for a long time. We could have watched them all day. These animals are magnificent in their own home."

"In each forest we learned how human activity has had an impact - banana plantations and logging near La Selva, coffee plantations near Las Cruces, and cattle at Palo Verde, with rice fields nearby. The forests are so ancient and powerful and fragile. They are part of a primeval harmony that we've only begun to learn."

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