Man, it's been almost 3 months since my last entry and 1 month since I returned to the States. Sorry to all my dedicated readers who have been eagerly awaiting the last few entries! Here's the stuff about the Environmental Sciences Concentration of LASP. I'll get the Cuba and re-entry stuff up soon. Enjoy for now!
What a trip! We learned about and saw some cool plants and animals over grueling month of hikes and lectures covering all the different biomes of Costa Rica, including the high elevation cloud forest and Paramo (very high, cold and harsh), the dry forest, volcanic regions, coral reefs and lowland tropical rainforest (the typically-thought-of biome). Most days started around 6 or 7 and ended about 8 or so. We even kept going on weekends! No complaints from me, however, since we crammed more stuff in! We stayed at several different research stations as well as with host families in some of the places we visited. We had readings as well as field lectures, in which the instructors would explain the characteristics of certain plants and animals we came across on hikes. Much of the study related to conservation and how human interaction with the natural environment helps and harms it.
One of the interesting things that you notice right away when studying ecology is that nature not always the peaceful, ideal, and static thing you it to be. The rainforest is incredibly dynamic. In a storm a big tree might be blown down, taking other trees with it and creating a gap. Light can now pierce down to the forest floor, changing the microecosystem in that area. New, quick-growing plants will take up residence and start to create some shade so that seedlings of larger trees can begin to grow and eventually restore the gap to its ultimate state of succession. There is also a super-efficient turn around and recycling of materials in the rainforest. As soon as something dies and falls to the ground, decomposers begin to break it down. Then positively charged clay particles in the soil grab the negatively charged phosphates, nitrates, sulfates, and organic compounds and transfer them to trees before rain water can leech the soil and wash the nutrients away. The nutrients then become part of the tree where they can either be eaten and turned into animal cells or fall to the ground again as leaves, twigs, etc.
This high turn around time keeps tons of biomass (plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals) above the ground over a relatively nutrient-poor soil (mostly clay and little topsoil). Think of it sort of as a massive juggling act. Instead of having rich soil that can be used to plant and sustain smaller trees and grass like in the U.S., the rainforest has to keep nutrients moving around since the clay is not suited to storing it. This also means that it is quite hard for the rainforest to grow back once this juggling act is disturbed.
As I said, nature is not always peaceful. One of the monkeys in Central America (Howler monkeys, I believe) have an interesting societal structure. When adolescent males reach a certain age they become the dominate monkey in the tribe (even though they are not the oldest). The new dominant male will kill all the young and mate with all the females in the tribe! We saw hermit crabs fighting over bigger shells. We saw monkeys snap off twigs and beat them against branches for no apparent reason. On one occassion we saw two monkeys picking on a sloth by shaking it in a high branch (the sloth tried to fight back). (On that same hike we thought we might get to see a hawk catch and eat a White-faced Cappuccin, but we didn't get so lucky.) There are also strangler figs that grow around established trees and suffocate them. So parasites, plants and animals exploit each other and the rest of nature, so who's to say humans shouldn't exploit it as well?
Though we did learn about deforestation, extinction, and many of the historical, political, and economic causes of them, we did see a few ways in which nature was in harmony with mankind. In Osteonal beach on the Gulf coast sea turtles come in massive numbers (at least once a year, can't remember if it's more) to lay eggs. The events are known as arribadas. There are only a few such locations with arribadas in the world (one is in Mexico, one in India, and possibly more). The arribadas are a recent phenomenon, the earliest recorded in 1959, I think. The cause of the phenomenon is unknown, but there are many theories, such as ease of finding a mate in a massive gathering, predator satiation (laying so many eggs that predators couldn't possibly eat them all and therefore some would surely survive), and more. Osteonal is the only such beach where it is legal to harvest the eggs! Now you might be slightly put off with Costa Rica at this point. I was! But it was interesting to learn that the harvesting actually helps the turtles! It is only legal in the first (possibly second day) of a big week-long nesting event. The turtles crawl onto the beach, dig a hole, lay the eggs, re-cover them, and return to the ocean. They often with dig up previous nests, crush eggs, or leave them very close to other nests. Crushed eggs lead to more bacteria in the sand which lead to death of healthy eggs. Too many eggs in a small area means that each egg gets less oxygen and each has a lower chance of survival (Yes, apparently eggs breathe!, go figure!). So harvesting some of the eggs (only 1 or 2% overall) helps the turtles, gives the local community some income, and brings in money to help protect the turtles further. It was very nice to see a positive example of human to nature interaction!
ECO-POLITICS
So I talked about the fast turn-around rate of nutrients and organic materials in the rainforest. Well the raising of cattle, banana and other fruit companies, lumber companies, and housing industries are causing lots of deforestation. To raise cattle on rainforest land requires slash-and-burn techniques. The tree ash allows the growing of grass for a few years to raise cattle, but after that more land must be slashed and burned. The old land is abandoned and it takes the area about 500 years to become re-forested. This is referred to as unsustainable development because after so long you will run out of rainforest and future generations will have no way to support themselves. Anything that you can, in theory, do from now until eternity is considered "sustainable". Fruit companies will cut down large areas and grow monocultures (the same species, or in the case of bananas, genetically identical clones of the same plant). Monocultures are advantageous because they produce consistent results. However, monocultures require large amounts of chemicals to kill pests, etc. The chemicals often cause cancer, birth defects or sterility in workers, and they often stay in the soil.
So why have cattle and monocultures in the tropics, you may ask, if they aren't suited to the area and they are bad for the workers.
First of all, you can't grow bananas very easily many other places.
Secondly, labor is cheap and environmental/labor laws often aren't enforced strictly.
Thirdly, there is a demand for such products in the U.S. and other developed countries.
Fourthly, there are Free Trade Agreements such and NAFTA and CAFTA (The North and Central American Free Trade Agreements) which allow U.S. rice, wheat, and other industries to sell subsidized (and sometimes dump extra) food in Central America at prices cheaper than local farmers can sell them. This forces local farmers out of business and forces them to start raising cattle or growing export products like sesame or cashews. Or they could work on a banana plantation part of the year and scrape by the rest of the year. Now you can start to see some of the many factors that contribute to rainforest destruction. A good book that explores this issues and explains it very well in simple terms is
Breakfast of Biodiversity. I recommend it if any of you get a chance to read it. I have a copy if any of you wants to borrow it at some point.
So now situations like the Osteonal beach become appealing. Of course, the question could be asked, "If the turtle population is increasing, wouldn't their food supply decrease and the population decrease of the things that share their food supply?" There are no simple answers when you're dealing with a huge puzzle like the environment, and I guess only time will tell. It's sort of like Organic Chemistry in that it really makes you think outside the box and it hurts your brain after a while...
Like monkeys, how much of human "monkey-business" (environmental exploitation) is sustainable? Monkeys play, mess around, and kill each other, yet it's all just factored into the big equation of the ecosystem. Look at beavers. They dam up a meadow and turn it into a marshy area, completely altering an ecosystem and changing the kinds of species that can live there. Leaf cutter ants will strip a green area bald. Are monkeys contributing to the destruction of the earth? What if they push one too many sloths out of trees. Then what if the sloth shortage leads to an abundance of some aggressive plant, which leads to a shortage of other plants, which eventually leads to the destruction of the ozone layer, which leads to an apocolyptic destruction of the earth? (I guess that would mean monkeys are the anti-Christ! LOL!) Okay, pretty far-fetched scenario, but hopefully you get my point. Maybe monkeys (and other areas of the environment) are not as sustainable as we think. Maybe global warming is just part of an even larger cycle than we anticipated. Maybe humans are actually somehow helping things with all our "exploitation" and "intervention". Couldn't it be argued that humans are part of the ecosystem just like monkeys, beavers and leave cutter ants? Then again, maybe we're not, and I would say it's definitely best to air on the side of caution by becoming more eco-friendly, etc. There has to be a happy medium some where, right? I don't think we have to go back to complete subsistence farming, but we should definitely try to fit better into the natural systems and processes.
I know by now that some of you are thinking, "Technology will save us! After we destroy the rainforest, we'll invent giant oxygen generators/air purifiers." Well, a lot of technology is inspired by nature and there is still a LOT to learn from it, so I say we should take care of it as much as possible.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
We did have some Biblical Reflections as part of our studies in which we read different authors' opinions about environmental stewardship. Some Christians would go as far as to say that when John 3:16 says that "For God so loved
the WORLD"
that it includes every aspect of the environment. Others would say
that Jesus was promoting sustainable practices by telling His disciples
to collect the leftovers after feeding the 4000 and 5000. Still others
would say that if we really are contributing to global warming, then
Jesus will just come back before we completely destroy the earth.
One thing a professor said that struck me was that he didn't think there are hardly any Bible verses that really talk about environmental stewardship, but as he said we have science and our brains to figure out what we probably should be doing with/about the environment. Without making a thorough search through the Bible myself I would say he's probably right. There is the beginning of Genesis where it says that man is given the task to "fill the earth and subdue it." (1:28) However, some experts say it would be more accurately read as "fill the earth and tend to it." Besides, we're made in God's image, and God is love and he takes care of His creation. Going back to my monkey argument, we are, after all, not monkeys, beavers, or leaf cutter ants. We know
that what we can do is not always what we should do and we have the
science and technology to even be able to study these things in the
first place! I guess all this tension in nature and the inner conflict
of self-restraint all goes all the way back to the Fall of Man and the curse on humankind and the earth.
Well, those are my impressions and thoughts. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings as I tried to explain a month's worth of learning and reflection. (I'm pretty impressed that I could write that much!) Other interesting things that happened included catching and indentifying bats at night using mist nets, seeing Koatis, Tapirs, and Peccarries, going on an 8 hour hike to and from an inactive volcano crater, and my final research project. I studied silvery-throated jay nesting behavior. It's the first such set of observations on that species reported to the scientific community! Pretty cool stuff! We found out that they're cooperative with at least four different birds caring for the nest we observed. We'll probably get into the next edition of the Birding Guide books for Costa Rica. Again, read
Breakfast of Biodiversity if you get a chance! Thanks for reading!
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