A Day in the Life..... Hal Groenboer

As someone who's been a secondary school teacher for almost for almost fourteen years, I've been very fortunate to have a number of diverse teaching experiences that have been a positive influence in my life.  However none can compare to the degree of education and personal enrichment that I have received here in Costa Rica during this Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program..

I've taught  mostly chemistry and honours chemistry for most of my teaching career, but as a child and as a student I was raised with a keen appreciation for the environment .  Professionally, I have always wanted to find ways of relating environmental education to the traditional courses of chemistry, physics and possibly even mathematics.  This experience in Costa Rica, although taught and studied by people with primarily a biology background , has given me several ideas for environmental applications to the physical sciences.  With a little luck, some support from people with expertise that I don't have, and some hard work, I'll try to develop these ideas in the months to come.  Hopefully, the experiments and demo's I develop will provide myself and other people who teach the physical sciences with even more answers to that ever-present classroom question, "Why do we need to know this?"

Hal.

The whole Costa Rica experience was sponsered and taught be members of the Woodrow Wilson Nation Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF), and the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS).  The trip itself was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

GO TO WWNFF                     GO TO OTS                         GO TO NSF

As participants in this program, we were sent to three different locations so that we could experience three different types of rain forests and look at the many different types of ecological problems facing each of these unique sites.  At each site we stayed about five days and we generally followed the same five day routine. At first we started with about a day-and-a-half of introduction to the site, which included guest speakers, lessons taught by our hosting staff members, day and night hikes through each of the rain forests and finally, an explanation of the problems facing each of the three sites.  After the introductory period, we were instructed, according to the Inquiry Method, to pose a question and research a problem unique to that particular site.  Our research was to incorporate both field and laboratory investigations that would help find an answer to the question we posed. After finishing our research, we were to write a brief report and give a short presentation on our research.

The first site that we visited was Palo Verde.  Palo Verde is what is known as a "dry" inland tropical forest.  Its called dry because its mountain sheltered area receives much less rain than its equivalent Le Selva, located on the Atlantic side of Costa Rica and also at about the same elevation.  At first glance the forest at Palo Verde looked very similar to many deciduous forests in North America, yet Palo Verde played host to a number of unique plants and animals.
 
 

The Palo Verde forest and its neighbouring swamp are unique because both had been a huge cattle ranch and a water fowl nesting site for more than three hundred years.  The forest had been mainly confined to the steep mountain sides where cattle grazed infrequently if at all.  The wetland was part of the ranch plan to develop the swamp as a tank for the cattle to drink from.  Palo Verde was acquired as a natural park and research station about thirty years ago.  The openings from the swamp to the river were closed, the cattle removed and the forest and and swamp allowed to re-establish themselves..

Palo Verde was a good example of an agricultural area that was allowed  to go back to its natural state.  Unfortunately for the scientists at the Palo Verde research station, no one new exactly what this natural state would be.  There were no records or descriptions of the area prior to its becoming a cattle ranch.  Furthermore, since many exotic species of plants had been introduced to the site during its use a ranch, they were creating a unique problem concerning the reestablishment of the forest and maintenance of the water fowl habitat.

Current research by the scientists at Palo Verde are showing that perhaps the invasive flora could be controlled best by the limited and closely monitored reintroduction of cattle into the area.  The cattle graze primarily on the invasive exotics, thus allowing the forest to re-establish itself with out any competition.  Further investigations were being done to look at re-opening the river to the swamp, (as was done in the days of cattle ranching).  The scientists were considering the limited and closely monitored introduction of water buffalo to control the invasive exotics and to help re-create the open water habitat for birds.
 
 

My team chose to do a wetland study regarding one of the exotic invasive species of cattail (hype) found in the Palo Verde Swamp. We studied whether or not there was any significant difference in the biodiverstiy found in the areas of the old cattle tanks now invaded by exotics and some natural   "black water" wetlands nearby.  Our results were interesting but in many ways inconclusive.  Our results lead to questions that indicated that further study would probably be needed in order to gain a complete understanding of the situation.  But that again is often the nature of science.

Our second visitation to a tropical rain forest was to the La Selva rain forest on the Atlantic, or rather Caribbean side of the mountains in Costa Rica.  La Selva is at a similar elevation as Palo Verde, but there is no mountain range protecting La Selva from the moist Caribbean air so the forest receives the full benefit almost of all the rain available to it.

La Selva is what I pictured as being your typical tropical rain forest.  In fact La Selva is the same tropical research station that was mentioned in the movie Medicine Man with Sean Connery.  The weather at the station was hot and humid during the day and a little cooler at night.  The plant growth was thick with what was jokingly referred to by members of my team as "house plants."  The trees were huge, and their canopies were several hundred feet above the ground.  Many of the large trees that we saw were over 400 hundred years old.  Bromeliads were everywhere as were many beautifully birds, exotic amphibians and even more exotic insects.  This is the site where we saw poison arrow frogs, butterflies, sloth, spider monkeys, bats, and several species of poisonous viper.  Visiting this rain forest was an incredible experience.

The environmental situation at La Selva is unique.  This forest is being preserved and studied when so much of the original and similar  rain forests in this region have been destroyed.  Further fund raising has allowed the officials at La Selva to purchase adjacent lands and expand the park.  The Scientists at La Selva are allowing the forest to re-establish itself in areas that had originally been cleared for agricultural purposes.  Whether or not these additional lands will help to prevent species extinction and the salvation of this type of wet forest remains to be seen.

Our research at La Selva centred around the biodiverstiy of two different species of tropical flowers known as Heliconia.  The two species of Heliconia are unique in that like many types of bromeliads, the flowers contain "tanks" of aqueous liquid that provide a mini habitat for a variety organisms.  A tropical rain forest is often a resource for almost unlimited species diversity, and since the biodiverstiy contains so many yet undiscovered benefits, my research team sought to investigate the biodiverstiy of two species of Heliconia found in the forest.  Again our results lead us to believe that there were many other questions and investigations that could be done to further clarify our findings.

Our third and final site for investigation was Las Cruces a tropical rain forest located at a about a three thousand foot elevation, a much higher elevation than either the Palo Verde or La Selva sites. The Las Cruces sites was located adjacent to a national botanical garden that was established almost three decades ago.  This rain forest is surrounded by agricultural land that is used primarily for coffee and cattle grazing.  Like both Palo Verde and La Selva, parts of the forest is being allowed to restore and expand itself in newly acquired lands, and even so has experienced various types of species extinction and endangerment.  Like Palo Verda the scientists here at Las Cruces have studied whether or not species biodiversity can be maintained in agricultural areas as well as in the forest through conducive agricultural practices.  The most recent study that comes to mind involves the use of Shade-Coffie plantations.

Our research here at Las Cruces concerned the abiotic factors of the soils in the area.  we studied three different sites, old forest land now converted to pasture, secondary forest and primary forest.  We were curious to see which soils were different and how.