Christa Lundberg's Web Page

I am a teacher at Mountain Ridge Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I teach 8th grade Integrated Science. My background is in Chemistry, but I came to Costa Rica for the entire experience and the opportunity to learn more about environmental education and environmental issues. I hope to bring back to my Science Department lots of new ideas about what I have learned in the tropics and how we can extend that to environmental education in our District.
The Environmental Science Institute in Costa Rica is an opportunity for teachers that is funded by NSF, and run by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF) and the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). This program brings teachers to San Jose, Costa Rica for a couple of days of orientation, and then to three different research station to learn and take part in research with scientists in the field. It is an incredible and exciting opportunity! Click here to e-mail me. I would love to answer questions about the Costa Rica experience! For a picture of me, not too recent and definitely not taken in the rain forest, click here.

To move down to the Las Cruces portion, click here. For Palo Verde, click here.

La Selva

La Selva is a place of incredible beauty and activity. It is a lowland tropical rain forest, with warm humid days and cooler humid nights. The night hikes are pure magic, with every few steps bringing a new discovery: snakes, spiders, beetles, and frogs. Pure, untouched, spectacular beauty, all while being cloaked in a darkness pierced only by headlamps, flashlights, and the eye shine from creatures reflecting our lights. Organisms here are of extreme sizes, both large and small. Our research project was an experience of a lifetime! We worked with parachuting frogs, tapping them until they leapt off of a balcony in a spread eagle pose. We took data regarding their size and distance traveled. To see our research paper, click here. What beautiful, amazing, and gentle creatures! See below for pictures.

	These are a combination of A. callidryas and A. saltator frogs. They are in a clear container, and the picture is looking at their bellies. They are all sleeping, since it is daytime and they are nocturnal.
This is Mike McCay, who is doing his doctoral work at the University of California Berkeley. He was kind enough to let us join him for our parachuting frogs project.
This is Agalychnis callidryas, which is not actually the species of frogs we tested. We tried to test two of these, and both were VERY reluctant to take part in our study. They climbed all over the place, and after several minutes of attempting to wrestle them back into place, we gave up. The ones we did experiment with, Agalychnis saltator, look very similar. They are just a less intense color on the side, with no stripes.
	Here is a frog that is in position and about to jump.
This is a very reluctant frog! He would much rather sleep than parachute.

Las Cruces

    Las Cruces is a very different place than La Selva. The accommodations and food are superb, although on occasion a cold shower was all that we had. Still, it was a great place to stay!
    Las Cruces is a mid elevation pre-montane rain forest, and as such, was quite rainy. The entry area to the Biological Station is the Wilson Botanical Garden, an absolutely beautiful spot. It seems as though every variety of tropical plant is here, and it is just stunning! Flower colors are bright, birds are abundant, and the aroma is rich and deep.
    The Garden transitions into the rain forest of Las Cruces. It is a fragmented area, much smaller than La Selva. While beautiful in its own right, there is much less diversity of life in this fragment. It is sad to know the toll that fragmentation has taken.
    Our project dealt with hummingbirds in the Wilson Botanical Garden. We looked at their feeding patterns in several different flowers. To see our project, click here. There is a picture of the tree with red flowers below.

Palo Verde

    Of the three stations, Palo Verde is definitely the wildest. It is a kingdom ruled by mosquitos, wasps, scorpions, monkeys and iguanas. It has a wildness to it that is unmatched at the other stations. After a long, strenuous, and slippery hike, we were treated to a beautiful view of the entire area. Stunning! While it is the most rustic of the stations, it is also the one with the homiest feel.
    Palo Verde is a dry tropical forest. It is surrounded by an area of rice fields and cow pastures. It is hot during the day, and only slightly cooler at night. Our group arrived here with much trepidation, but it has been a wonderful adventure. One of the benefits of this area is somewhat thinner trees, which gives you a good view of that which is in the trees. One of my goals in coming here was to see monkeys in the wild. We were loudly awakened by howler monkeys, and then treated to over two hours of viewing them. They were all over the trees! At one point, we had 22 monkeys in our sight! They were of all sizes and shapes. I was particularly touched by the sounds of a baby monkey calling out in apparent fear, and the mother's reassurances when she arrived. The whimpering went on for several minutes, but the mother's sounds slowly cooed the baby into quiet safety. Somehow, they are so similar to us.
    Our project was on the wetlands. We looked at the biodiversity of sediment, water, and plants, both in a rice field and a somewhat pristine swamp, collecting aquatic creatures. To view our project paper, click here.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
CN 5281, Princeton NJ 08543-5281 - Tel:(609)452-7007 - Fax:(609)452-0066
Technical contact: lpt@woodrow.org