In early 2013, the OTS Native American and Pacific Islander Research Experience (NAPIRE) Program launched a new activity - the NAPIRE Partnership Workshop aimed at strengthening our service to NAPIRE students by 1) building stronger alliances between the NAPIRE program and LSAMP institutions, 2) identifying Best Practices for guiding Native American and Pacific Islander students in natural science research, and 3) recommending improvements to the NAPIRE Program to make the internship an even more rewarding experience for students and mentors.  

 

The first Partnership Workshop, held in January 2013 at Las Cruces Biological Station (LCBS), brought together a select group of Native American educators and mentors from LSAMP institutions. In January of 2014, we gathered a new group of mentors as well as former NAPIRE Students and Teaching Assistants to continue the discussion about how the program, and preparation of research mentors, can be improved.

 

Among the ideas put forward in the 2014 Workshop include 1) arranging visits and lectures from Native American tribal elders and Pacific Island cultural practitioners to help ground and mentor the NAPI students in their cultural histories and traditions; 2) educating research mentors about the importance of cultural traditions and the different lifestyles found in NAPI families and communities and how these factors can affect the students' perspective on and motivation for field research and learning; 3) scheduling visits to other sites in Costa Rica in a way that the travel does not interrupt the important process of field research; and 4) providing more opportunities for NAPI students and mentors to get to know one another and share information about their cultural and family traditions. Many other excellent suggestions were made regarding ways to improve the NAPIRE Program and students' experiences. As follow up to the workshops, Program staff will be working with mentors and former students to develop a Best Practices Guide for training research mentors and working to implement several of the programmatic changes recommended by the group. 

NAPIRE is still accepting applications for qualified and motivated Research Mentors for the 2014 Summer Program. Mentors guide Native American and Pacific Islander undergraduate students in designing and carrying out a ecological research project in the Las Cruces Biological Station. Being a mentor is an exciting and highly rewarding experience!

 

As a NAPIRE Mentor, your travel expenses to Costa Rica, Room & Board, station fees, research permits, in-country transportation, and some equipment costs are covered in full. If you are interested, or know of faculty, postdocs, or other PhD or ABD researchers who may be interested in spending a summer with twenty amazing NAPI students in Costa Rica at the Las Cruces Biological Station, please forward this newsletter to them and/or ask them to contact the NAPIRE Program Coordinator for more information.

R2M (Route to Market) Logística is the first Costa Rican company to start operating on carbon neutral basis, since July 2013. Federico Jenkins, General Manager, together with Liana Babbar, OTS Director for Costa Rica, and Zak Zahawi, Director of Las Cruces Biological Station, conceived a creative solution to compensate the gas emissions of this new company by contributing on the purchase of a 4 acres (1.7 ha) land adjacent to Las Cruces Biological Station. Additionally, through this commitment, R2M Logística supports the scientific research, education and development of tourism on a win-win relation.

Dr. Liana Babbar, OTS Director General and Fredrico Jenkins, R2M General Manager

R2M Logística engages to make an annual payment during 4 years. This contribution will complement the existing OTS' land acquisition fund. In a modest but warm activity, was signed the land purchase, on December 17, 2013 at Las Cruces, San Vito de Coto Brus. In the event participated Liana Babbar, Zak Zahawi among other OTS staff and on behalf of R2M Logística, Darwin Araya.

 

R2M Logística distributes the products of British American Tobacco Caribbean and Central America (BATCCA) in Costa Rica, this activity was performed by BATCCA until June 2013. 

Participants of Ecología Tropical y Conservación 2014-2 at Coopesilencio Photo by Federico Chinchilla

OTS' Spanish language fundamentals course is celebrating its 40th anniversary with the 2014 edition of Ecología Tropical y Conservación.   This annual course for Latin American biologists, first offered in 1974 as Ecología de Poblaciones, continues to draw more applications than any other OTS graduate course. The leaders of the current course include veteran coordinators Federico Chinchilla and Sabrina Amador, TA Emilia Triana and a host of 20 invited faculty each participating for about a week among the six Costa Rican sites visited, which include the three OTS field stations, plus Coopesilencio, Cuerici and Monteverde.

The course has become famous for its ability to help Latin American biologists hone their skills in field research, including hypothesis formulation and testing, data collection and analysis, and presentation of polished results. Nineteen participants representing 11 nationalities are attending the 2014 course, including seven students from OTS member institutions. The six-week field course began on January 15 at OTS headquarters on the UCR campus, is currently at Palo Verde and will wrap up on February 24 after a conservation unit at Monteverde.

Students interested in the 2015 course should apply by June 13, 2014.

Last month, our newest graduate course, An Introduction to Tropical Ecology, took the fundamentals into the digital age. The course kept the key elements of the classic "Fundamentals Course" but added an emphasis on how to communicate science both to scientists and the general public in today's media-based world.
In addition to learning how to conduct research, the students are produced a video project, a student blog, and a course podcast.  Their entries on YouTube attracted some welcome attention on the web and were referenced in the following blog posting

The Scientist Videographer: Blog Post
National Geographic: Explorers Journal
John Carroll University
Small Pond Science: Blog Post
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Costa Rica Star

 

The Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) in Yunnan Province, China recently held its 3rd annual international symposium from January 13-16, 2014. The symposium, with the theme of "Botanical Gardens and Climate Change," was attended by close to 100 participants and more than 40 presenters from over 20 countries.  

 

Zak Zahawi, Director of the Las Cruces Biological Station in southern Costa Rica, represented OTS at the meeting and gave a talk on the role of botanical gardens in climate change using the Wilson Botanical Garden as a case study. Talks spanned a range of topics that included a talk on a large-scale 40 year regional study showing the proliferation of smaller sized trees in tropical and subtropical China, with a concomitant decrease in the largest trees that is linked to changes in climate in the region; shifts in the phenology of different groups of plants linked to climate change; a decrease in potential evapotranspiration rates as a result of warmer climates; predicted future distributions of plants based on different climate change models; the role that botanical gardens can play in generating data to further the debate on climate change and their role in educating the public on climate change; and a number of regionally based masters and dissertation projects from XTBG and other Chinese research institutions that had an emphasis on climate change research. XTBG has a long tradition of research and more than 2500 publications are attributed to the research facility, which has ~80 faculty staff on a year-round basis. A 1-page draft declaration was produced that outlines the role botanical gardens should play in addressing the threat of climate change.

 

In addition to talks during the three-day symposium, participants were taken on a tour of the botanical garden and the adjacent forest reserve on two separate occasions. The 55-year old gardens also celebrated their 55th anniversary and a gala spectacle was held on the closing day of the symposium with traditional dance and songs from a number of different regional areas.

 

The botanical garden grounds house an incredible collection of plants but perhaps the most striking immediate feature that one confronts is the incredible scale of the place. Entire hectares are dedicated to a single group of plants and to get from one area to the next you need to get into a modified electric golf cart buggy. For example the new vine display that was opened during the conference is spread over 7 hectares and more than 500 species were collected to establish the collection; in turn, the flowering plant collection is spread across 25 hectares! At this scale displays often are grouped in arrangements as a small population of plants, which creates a very different feeling and visual perspective compared to the typical displays of most botanical gardens, where a few representative individuals are plants as most gardens are necessarily restricted both by space availability and workforce. In all the garden grounds comprise some 1,100 hectares (which is more than three times the size of the entire Las Cruces protected area!), making it one of the largest botanical garden in China and the world and there are more than 13,000 species in its collection. Certainly a botanical garden of this scale should attract a large number of visitors and indeed during peak periods there are an estimated 10,000 visitors to the garden grounds daily! More than 650,000 garden visitors are registered annually.

 

Rainforest Conservation: Making Science Available in Spanish was successfully funded through the efforts of the book's co-editors, Nat Wheelwright (OTS 78-3) and Nalini Nadkarni (OTS 79-3). Their plan to translate the book into Spanish and make it available free online to anyone in Latin America who has an interest in understanding and protecting tropical cloud forests, will be completed in the coming months, thanks to the support of donations raised through a grassroots Kickstarter campaign

Congratulations Nat and Nalini!

NEW- Tropical Conservation & Sustainable Development: Law, Policy & Professional Practice