Category: Uncategorized

22-01-21 Monteverde Our guide, Raquel, says the difference between rain forest and cloud forest is the elevation. Of course, wrapped up in that one variable are a lot of effects. Orogenous rainfall (that caused by air masses being pushed up a mountainside, expanding, cooling, and dropping its water) is one. But something even more fundamental…

22-01-16 On January 10 we had a Zoom call from Dr. Pilar (“Bibi”) Santidrian Tomillo about sea turtles in the age of climate change. On a bright moonlit beach last night we saw them. Dr. Santidrian is the research director of The Leatherback Trust, an organization working to monitor, understand, and conserve the three species…

22-01-14 Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who loved a commoner. Her father found out, captured the young man, and threw him into the volcano. She pined for him ever after, staying near the crater until she was an old woman hunched over her steaming, sulfurous cauldron. Thus goes one explanation for…

22-01-15 Playa Hermosa We made a good attempt today at seeing firsthand the plight of coral reefs and their many species, but nature and humans both conspired against us. Coral, an animal polyp that relies upon a symbiotic alga to survive, are sensitive to lots of conditions altered by a warming climate: temperature, sedimentation, more…

This week features the continuation of the Hillstrom Museum Battle at the River Bottom exhibit. Battle at the River Bottom: Drawings and Videos by Kristen Lowe Monday – Friday 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Saturday – Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Hillstrom Museum This exhibit features recent works by faculty artist Kristen Lowe, introducing…

22-01-09 “La selva” means “the rainforest” and in this case it refers to a biological research station in that ecosystem that was established in the late 1950s and gradually expanded over the years through the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation and various US and Costa Rican universities. It is now run by the…

Once upon a time a volcano rose along the western Caribbean coast after millennia of marine depositions building up. The new igneous cone, driven by the collision and subduction of the Cocos under the Caribbean tectonic plates, fragmented the earlier rocks into a jumbled landscape. Add in a few tens of millions of years of…

22-01-06 The president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, describes the country’s response to COVID as “el baile y el martillo,” the dance and the hammer. If infections are down and the population is being careful, everyone can dance and enjoy themselves. If infections rise, then down comes the hammer: curfews, capacity limits, closings, and such.…