Time flies! My first set of camera and recorder deployments are ready to be picked up after 15 days. I am very excited to see the results. I will have a total of 30 sites (15 in old growth forest and 15 in regenerating forest), but I only have 15 camera traps and recorders as they are expensive. Therefore I split my sites into two rounds of deployment, with some from each forest type in each round to avoid any bias caused by weather or other conditions that impact one of the rounds. I will also account for these potential issues later in my analyses. As for this first round, we got some awesome images!
We have thousands of images and recordings now, and will continue to gather more still. It is lot logistically ideal to go through each photo or audio file by hand, so I will be using two AI software tools, both of which are free to the public! For photos, I will be using Wildlife Insights and for audio recordings I will use Arbimon. Both of these websites allow users to upload their data and use AI trained on previous data to identify animals. This saves an immense amount of time for researchers as well as allows data to easily be shared with other scientists. I am also using sites from a previous camera trapping expedition by a network of scientists with sites across the globe. I am hoping to visit and work in other sites in this network during my PhD! We also continue to see amazing plants, animals, and views everywhere we walk. 15 more days and our second round of results will be ready to collect.
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While I wait for my camera traps and acoustic recorders to collect data, I am taking this time to reach out to various community members here to learn about Costa Rica. Ecotourism (tourism centered around natural environments) is very popular in Costa Rica, and a important part of its economy. Costa Rica is also a leader in sustainability and with pioneering policies. I decided to learn more about these green practices by visiting a nearby nature reserve, Lapa Verde (which means "green macaw" in Spanish). Established in 2013, this reserve hosts scientists, school groups, and more while also partaking in reforestation and protection measures. This reserve is also part of the crucial biological corridor San Juan-La Selva, which provides continous habitat for species movement. On the day I visited, there was a school group from the USA that had come to be "scientists for a day". Managers of the reserve walked us all through the forest, with students learning how to use camera traps, mark vegetation, and observe the natural world. During my visit, I learned some different camera trap techniques and showed the managers the AI powered website I am using to analyze images. They also showed me some beautiful images from their camera trapping efforts, and we visited the canopy tower, which was gorgeous. After compleition of my project, I will be sharing my camera trap images with them as well, as my field site is in close proximity to the reserve and these photos can be useful for monitoring species at Lapa Verde too. They are always looking for collaborators and visitors, so reach out if you are interested! A few days later, I visited Costa Rica Best Chocolate. This is an organization that emphasizes conservation through tourism, not tourism about conservation. The goals of their work are to teach others about nature and how we must protect it. Rodolfo was my guide and described the history and mission of his work. His father worked at La Selva (the research station I am staying at) when it first began. Rodolfo was a guide at La Selva and learned about conservation through this work and his family, as well as learned the importance of conservation for the people of his community. When I met Rodolfo, we began by first entering the rainforest and placing our hands on a tree. Out loud, we thanked the forest for this visit and took some deep breaths. Rodolfo explained that this is a practice he does whenever entering the forest. He spoke about how sometimes when you walk through a forest and then turn around, it can feel like the forest is pushing you out. You might be familiar with this off feeling from any hike or walk you have done, as I certainly had felt it before. But Rodolfo said once he began to acknowledge and thank the forest, he has never felt this pressure to leave, and I never felt it that day either. We continued to walk through the property as he explained his organization's role in the community. He buys land that would be used for pineapple plantations and gives job opportunities to the previous land owners to grow cacao. He told me several stories in which he helped community members, such as an artisian with a broken oven and therefore inability to work, for no cost. Rodolfo says he knew things will work out in the end, and looks out for the community. He spoke about how people in his community often hear the phrase "climate change" and think of the icebergs far away, and do not realize the impacts close to home as well. Rodolfo's mission is to bring this knowledge to locals and to anyone who visits. He does this through teaching about cacao. He walked me through each step from harvesting, fermenting, drying, grinding, and we tried a little bit of each stage as we went. He emphasized how it was this process that really delivered the knowledge he wanted, as it was through sharing this food that we connected, becoming friends and understanding each other a bit more. I was very grateful for Rodolfo and the experience. It was intimate but at the same time welcoming. At the end of the tour, there is a gift shop with wood work and jewelry from local artists and chocolate bars and bits to help support Costa Rica Best Chocolate. Of course I bought as many chocolates as I could, as well as a small sloth that was too cute to pass up.
I am truly fortunate to be able to work here and meet amazing naturalists, leaders, and people. The photos and results of my project will be shared with La Selva to use for grants and/or educational purposes. My hope is that by openly sharing all my data and planning, future students and/or researchers can build off of my work and seek out their own questions, just as I did with the work of previous scientists. There is very much a feeling of "science together" here, and I think that is a crucial approach for successful investigations and connections with the landscape, and more importantly, the people.
Hello, and welcome back! I have been for about a week and have been exploring the station and forest. The area is beautiful, the food is great, and I have a lovely view from my lab room! I spent the first few days planning where to put my camera traps and acoustic recorders. I will be placing 15 cameras and 15 recorders (as pairs) in various parts of the forest that are either old growth forest or forest that has regenerated after a period of disturbance. Over the course of 15 days, this equipment will gather data on species occurrence. I want to investigate what areas of the forest support which species interactions. By looking at species occurrence in different areas, I can give probabilities that two species (one predator and one prey) may come into contact and interac (predation). If areas with less vegetation have fewer occurrences of species, then these important species interactions, which support the health of the ecosystem, may not be happening. As deforestation and habitat loss continues in forests across the world, understanding the impacts of human driven changes is crucial when designing conservation strategies.
After vegetation measurements, we installed the camera traps and acoustic recorders. Camera traps work by detecting movement as well as infrared radiation (heat), taking photos of the animal (or sometimes a human by accident, but all photos of humans are anonymously deleted). Acoustic recorders run for 5 minutes at the beggining of every hour to record the sounds of the forest. These techniques are less labor intensive than taking data by hand, however they generate a lot of data. Therefore, I will be using AI software to assist in identifying species in photos and recordings. I will talk more about that in the future. After walking quite a few kilometers in the forest, we finished deploying our equipment for these 15 sites, and now we wait. During our walks in the forest, we saw some pretty cool sites so far! Check back for the first round of results in a couple weeks!
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AuthorI am an ecology PhD student in the Beaudrot Lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Archives
November 2023
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