Back in Atenas, we conducted another field project with the goal to improve the management of the organic mango and orange orchards at our Center, which remains an ongoing learning experience for both students and faculty. We discussed environmental and social challenges and potential solutions, arising from climate change and globalization in a biodiversity rich developing country.
Time seems to follow its own rules here sometimes, because it is incredible how much we have taught, learned, done, hiked, and got our hands and eyes on in just 4 weeks. And next? Next week we are off to Ometepe Island, Nicaragua. This experience will open a whole new perspective on everything that we have done so far here in Costa Rica.
[post_title] => Covering Ground in Costa Rica
[post_excerpt] => It's incredible how much we have taught, learned, done, hiked, and got our hands and eyes on in just 4 weeks.
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[post_content] => The semester is almost over now, and as always around this time, students are about to turn in their Directed Research papers. This semester we are working on four different projects:
• Assessment of community capitals around protected areas in the Central Volcanic Mountain Range
• Wildlife disturbance by roads in Carara National Park
• Assessment of the impacts of hummingbird feeders in Monteverde
• Quantification of ecosystem services provided by secondary forests around Atenas
The Directed Research course is one of the highlights of each semester for both students and faculty. Students have the opportunity to gather first-hand experience, throughout the entire process of scientific research, from designing a project to analyzing and communicating the results to peers. Most importantly, we spend a week out in the field, to collect data and get familiar with the study system, but also with the issues that arise between society and the environment. Our results are intended to help protected area managers, local governments, and other stakeholders involved in implementing sustainable development strategies.
Of course we emphasize a solid background in data management and statistical techniques. But it is the integration of intensive field work with analyzing your own data, in combination with the exposure to real world environmental issues that motivate students to identify themselves with their research projects and work hard to make it a success for each one of them and everyone else who is involved.
[post_title] => Exposure to Real Environmental Issues
[post_excerpt] => The semester is almost over now, and as always around this time, students are about to turn in their Directed Research papers.
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[post_content] => Personally, I do not like the term "pest" very much, as it reflects our narrow perspective on things. At the Center for Sustainable Development Studies, we have about 2.5 hectares of land dominated by 2 exotic tree species (oranges and mangoes, both originally from Asia). Both are fairly well adapted to the seasonal tropical climate, but without human intervention, the surrounding semi-deciduous tropical forest would take over the place in a few years. What is nature supposed to do? Of course it will send us "pests and diseases" in the form of fruit flies, rust mites, leaf cutter ants, scale bugs, beetles, caterpillars, and all sorts of fungi to make room for a far more diverse, productive, and native vegetation. On the other hand, fresh orange juice and ripe mangoes picked right from the tree are really great. And besides that, these fruits are an important source of income in this area, because they do in fact grow well and tasty here.
The common response to pressure from "pests and diseases" is chemical warfare. Until a couple of years ago, commercial insecticides and fungicides were commonly used on the Center's farm by external contractors managing our orchard and by our own maintenance staff. There is a long list of very convenient and effective products. But improper handling or long-term exposure to pesticides can cause a similarly long list of severe toxicological effects, such as skin and eye irritation, nausea, headaches, cramps, vomiting or diarrhea. Chronic effects include potential damage to the liver and reproductive organs, birth defects, and cancer. Effects on the environment may include large scale kills of birds or fish and toxicity for honeybees, among others. Globally, tens of thousands of people die every year of pesticide poisoning, and externalities from negative impacts of pesticide use on human health and the environment amount to billions of dollars.
When we started our certification process with the Rainforest Alliance, we decided to go beyond the regular requirements and transition right away into organic farming. We took farm management into our own hands and got seriously involved with integrated pest management (IPM). IPM basically consists of three steps that help to minimize the application of agrochemicals: prevention, monitoring, and control. In the case of organic farming, there is a strong emphasis on prevention and monitoring, because the options to control a massive pest outbreak are limited.
About two years ago, we hardly knew anything about the management of tropical fruit orchards. With the help from our local staff and students we now have identified the most important "pests and diseases" at our site and have gained a substantial understanding of their ecology, life cycles, and their potential weak spots. Most importantly, we are dealing with leaf cutter ants (Atta sp.), formerly kept at unperceivable levels by chemicals, fruit flies (e.g. Anastrepha ludens) and fungal infections such as gummosis (Phytophthora spp.) on orange trees and anthracnose (Colletotrichum gloeosporioides) in mangoes. In addition, we have learned some important lessons that may help us to get closer to our goal: grow healthy oranges and mangoes organically.
Lesson 1: First surprise – organic agriculture does in fact use some chemical inputs. The Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture, as well as the USDA National Organic Program refer to a list of allowed substances. Fungal diseases for instance can be reduced by a combination of prevention (e.g. pruning trees) and control with copper sulfate. Subsequently beneficial fungi of the genus Trichoderma can be introduced to help us avoiding new infections.
Lesson 2: Organic agriculture requires a lot of work and research. This is a good thing, because that is exactly what we are doing here. Fortunately, we do not really rely on selling our fruits. While we are currently losing a substantial part of our production to "pests and diseases," the farm has a higher value now as an outdoor laboratory and classroom for our students and faculty.
Lesson 3: Leaf cutter ants are really hard to beat. They form a super-organism buried deep down in huge underground nests where they feed the leaves of our fruit trees, vegetables, tree nursery and ornamental plants to a fungus that in turn feeds their exploding populations. They can kill a tree by defoliating it repeatedly. We have tried several organic remedies – all failed. We need to become more systematic in our efforts to get the ants down to a level that will allow co-existence. As a first step, we are now building physical barriers to protect our trees individually. As a next step we try to decrease their numbers either by attacking them directly (e.g. by using a non-toxic mineral, Diatomite, which dehydrates their bodies on contact) or their fungus, by trying to introduce other fungi into their nest.
Lesson 4: Fruit flies are rather easy to beat. They can ruin a whole harvest, but they have a weak spot. The larvae need to get out of the fallen fruits and into the ground, in order to complete their life cycle. So we pick up the fallen fruits and that’s it. These fruits are turned into organic fertilizer.
Lesson 5: Other "pests," such as scale bugs or rust mites are bizarre and amazing little creatures that we never would even have heard of without studying our trees more closely. They can get massive, but are easy to control, e.g. by washing them off the branches.
After 2 years we cannot say that we are there yet. We are still struggling to get things under control. Is it worth all the extra hours of work and demolished orange trees? In my opinion – yes, absolutely. Finally we are making a true connection to our farm. The benefits of teaching and learning by doing are obvious. Understanding the challenges of organic farming in the tropics is an eye-opening experience. Hopefully we will soon be able to produce high quality oranges and mangoes and become an example for other growers in the area.
[post_title] => Lessons Learned from 2 Years of Organic Management on the Orchard
[post_excerpt] => Finally we are making a true connection to our farm. The benefits of teaching and learning by doing are obvious.
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[post_content] => Ometepe Island is formed by two cone shaped volcanoes emerging from Lake Nicaragua and it represents one of the sites with the highest potential for tourism development in the country. Although the island is still mainly characterized by agricultural activities and a rural life style, tourism is increasingly driving development, as it is becoming a major source of income. The entire island has been declared as a Biosphere Reserve by the UNESCO in 2010. This new status will hopefully help to improve land use planning and natural resources management, and promote sustainable tourism.
The two volcanoes on Ometepe–Concepción and Maderas–are protected areas, representing part of the core zone of the Biosphere Reserve; however, funding for conservation remains scarce, and management plans or government staff are widely absent. Maderas Volcano has recently been declared a National Park. It protects one of the most important primary cloud forests of the country, as it remains widely intact and harbors endemic tree species, such as Ardisia ometepensis. The volcano offers many opportunities for tourism activities, such as hiking or exploring archeological sites. In the absence of a protected area administration, these activities are organized by local communities or hotels. The management of visitation impacts is becoming essential, as more and more tourists are visiting these unique and fragile sites.
One of the most important bases for protected area management is mapping and zoning to determine attractions, site accessibility, and possible negative impacts from visitation. In 2012, SFS started mapping the trails within Maderas Volcano National Park. This semester we covered a major part of the trail system, during a 9-hour expedition that took us from nearly sea level up to 1395 m (4577 feet), over the cloud-swept summit of the volcano and back down the mountain to the shores of Lake Nicaragua.
The goal of the project is to map the extent, condition, attractions, and facilities of the entire trail system. We used several hand-held GPS receivers and two survey grade GPS units, which were provided by Lyndon State College, Vermont, to obtain an accurate trail map. Students have the opportunity to gather relevant field data by using GPS technology and to produce professional maps for conservation and recreation management by using Geographical Information System (GIS) software. Our goal is to make this information available to a broad range of potential users, such as tourist guides, hotels, and local authorities as a tool for sustainable tourism planning and management.
[post_title] => Mapping the Trails of Maderas Volcano National Park
[post_excerpt] => The goal of the project is to map the extent, condition, attractions, and facilities of the entire trail system.
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[post_content] => El Sur (“The South”) is a small village of less than 100 people, located right on the edge of several thousand hectares of protected tropical rain and mountain forests in the Central Pacific Region of Costa Rica. The village is surrounded by a mosaic of pastureland, timber plantations, secondary forests and pristine forest areas. The SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies has a long-standing relationship with a local, community-based organization called Ecosur, which has the main goal to develop the area in a sustainable way by small-scale agro-ecotourism, education, and sound land management practices. This is the place that we chose for the development of the students’ independent research projects for the past summer session. Students had the opportunity to develop their own field project, based on a broad variety of topics, ranging from wild food harvesting, stream condition assessment, carbon sequestration, ecological effects of habitat fragmentation, the community’s perception of climate change issues and many more.
In my opinion this is a great approach to learn about doing research, because students get to explore real-world problems according to their own interest and develop a strong ownership of their project, which is an important motivation to give their best out in the field. It is indeed impressive how much can be done in such a short time. Within a couple of weeks students developed ideas, came up with sampling designs, completed their field work, wrote a report and delivered a set of excellent presentations to students, faculty, and outside visitors, back at the Center.
What was perhaps most inspiring for all of us, besides the individual achievements of each student, was living for a week within a welcoming rural community. In El Sur, many community members perceive the surrounding protected areas as a source for education and development and have a genuine commitment to conservation. Our visit was a great opportunity to learn from each other about sustainable development challenges and strategies by sharing perspectives from different part of the world.
[post_title] => Student Research in El Sur & Carara National Park
[post_excerpt] => Students had the opportunity to develop their own field project based on a broad variety of topics.
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[post_content] => Our last trip took us high up to Cerro de la Muerte (the ‘Mountain of Death’). Around its cloud swept peaks, at more than 3000 m (10,000 feet) above sea level, the remnants of majestic tropical montane oak forests and secondary forests give way to the páramo. The páramo is an alpine vegetation formation, found above the tree line in the tropical Andes and mountain ranges of Southern Central America. The low and twisted shrubs, herbs and dwarfed bamboo may at the same time look familiar and strangely exotic to a visitor from temperate zones.
In Costa Rica, small extensions of these ecosystems are found only around the highest mountain peaks. The páramo vegetation reaches its northern limits here and is particularly vulnerable to human disturbances (e.g. fire, cattle grazing, trampling), as regeneration rates are very slow. The Tapantí – Macizo Cerro de la Muerte National Park and the Los Santos Forest Reserve protect small areas of páramo on both sides of the Inter American Highway.
We spent the night at a small, rustic field station on the top of the mountain, our group gathering closely around a blazing wood stove, while the temperatures outside slowly approached the freezing point. The next morning felt like a friendly spring day again when we arrived at the páramo for our field exercise. Wildlife is not too abundant in this rather inhospitable area, but some lucky students were able to spot mountain salamanders or spiny lizards among the rocks.
We set up several plots along roads and trails and assessed the impacts of small scale human disturbance on vegetation by evaluating indicators such as changes in floral composition, top soil erosion, and incidence of solid waste. Plots and vegetation disturbances were mapped using GPS receivers. Back at the Center we used the data collected on the mountain peak for different exercises covering statistical analyses and basic GIS applications. Statistics become more tangible when students have the opportunity to collect their own data. The goal is to learn different field research techniques and get prepared for the Directed Research projects which are coming up next week and will keep us busy for the rest of this summer session.
[post_title] => Field Trip to the Costa Rican Páramo
[post_excerpt] => Our last trip took us high up to Cerro de la Muerte (the ‘Mountain of Death’).
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[post_content] => During the last two weeks, students have already conducted two field exercises in Monteverde and at Poas Volcano National Park. Field exercises are small, hands-on research projects that often produce important information for our stakeholders.
This week started with a field exercise on monitoring the condition of our own mango and orange orchards. One requirement for maintaining our Rainforest Alliance certification as a sustainable farm is implementing a management plan which includes monitoring "pests and diseases." Monitoring and prevention are critical steps of integrated pest management, if you want to reduce—or even better, eliminate—agrochemical use, as we are doing here at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to work on this challenge with the help of a large, motivated group of students. This morning we turned literally hundreds of leaves, branches, and fruits to discover a huge variety of insects and other organisms that seem to enjoy our organic mangos and oranges just as much as we do… Of course it would be far "easier" to spray agrochemicals on them without taking a second look, but then we would lose the opportunity to actually practice sustainable farming on our own finca (not to talk about consequences for the environment or human health).
Organic farming is hard work, especially during the first years of transitioning from conventional management. Yes, the leaf cutter ants are still winning, and yes, we produce far less fruits than a few years ago, but we also managed to sell our first crop of organic mangos at an excellent quality this year. And there are always plenty of oranges around for everyone to enjoy. Eventually things do arrive at a new equilibrium.
With help from our students, we have been fine-tuning our monitoring protocols and compiled data on our orchards for two years now. The resulting information is a great help in understanding "pest" ecology and life cycles, which is the only way to develop and implement successful organic management.
[post_title] => Field Exercises and Organic Farm Management
[post_excerpt] => One requirement for maintaining Rainforest Alliance certification as a sustainable farm is a management plan to monitor "pests and diseases."
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[post_content] => On the horizon: the dark blue Pacific Ocean and the fading mountain skyline of the Nicoya Peninsula. Right in front of us: covering most of the beach, a vast area of half-burned, smoldering trash. We are at Playa Azul, the "Blue Beach" on the Central Pacific Coast. Tourists do not come here on their trip through this tropical paradise.
Costa Rica deservedly enjoys a reputation as a pioneer and world leader in biodiversity conservation, with a quarter of its territory covered by protected areas and an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral in the near future. At the same time, the country has postponed confronting some of its environmental issues for far too long. One of these issues is water and waste management.
The case of the Tarcoles River Basin perfectly illustrates these problems. The Tarcoles watershed covers only 4% of the country, but contains half of its inhabitants, three major cities, and most of the economic activity. Waste water treatment is absent. Hundreds of tons of garbage are dumped into the landscape on a daily basis, while municipalities struggle with organizing solid waste management programs to comply with new national regulations. A gigantic waste water treatment plant for the capitol city is being built right now, but it is quite a challenge to create the infrastructure that will connect this plant to the homes of hundreds of thousands of people after decades of uncontrolled urban sprawl. So, things are behind schedule and a lot of garbage ultimately ends up in the ocean.
At first sight, you wouldn’t even notice the devastating effects on the environment and on impoverished communities near the coast. It's easy to look the other way. Last week we took our student group to one of these "forgotten corners" of Costa Rica, to learn first-hand about the challenges of integrated watershed management in a developing country. It is ironic that we see scarlet macaws, crocodiles, poison dart frogs, monkeys, and other wildlife in the tropical rainforest just around the corner, on the same field trip.
But words and discussions are not enough. Our community of Atenas is a part of the greater Tarcoles River basin. At the Center for Sustainable Development Studies, we work with the community to solve some of these problems at the source. We initiate stream clean ups and cooperate with local organizations that reforest and restore micro-watersheds. We implement sound waste management practices and waste water treatment at our own facilities and we are eliminating pesticides on our farm. We offer recycling and composting workshops for our neighborhood. Last, but not least, we are doing research on the condition of local streams with our students.
The problems we are facing are gigantic and sometimes it is discouraging to move forward only by little steps. However, if an anonymous collective of individuals can cause such an impressive mess, then a growing group of concerned individuals can also work together to fix it.
[post_title] => Field Trip to Playa Azul – Polluted Paradise
[post_excerpt] => Right in front of us: covering most of the beach, a vast area of half-burned, smoldering trash.
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[post_content] => Today we visited Finca El Toledo, a shade-grown organic coffee farm in the hills of Atenas, owned by the Calderon family. The farm is an opportunity for students to learn firsthand about a successful model for integrating conservation and agricultural production within a family business. As Gabriel Calderon explains, most of the farmers who decided to go organic in the area did so primarily because of health concerns. They simply did not want to be exposed to pesticides anymore. Obtaining the organic certification is not an easy process, as it involves major changes in the mindset and a 3-year transition period without receiving a price premium. But the real challenge is maintaining the certification in the face of dropping yields, price hikes for coffee, and the devastating outbreak of coffee rust which has affected all Central American countries during the last two years.
What makes an organic family farm a success? The price premium of organic coffee is an incentive, but it is not enough to convince most farmers, as it usually does not even compensate for the decreased yield that comes with organic management. It takes dedication, and as in the case of the Calderon family, also creativity. They roast their own coffee and sell it locally, which represents a substantial addition of value in comparison just exporting dry "green coffee." The El Toledo farm also receives a growing number of visitors; agro-ecotourism has become an important complementary activity to their traditional way of growing coffee. The family is proud to share their values and sustainable practices with visitors from many parts of the world.
Organic farms, especially in the case of shade grown coffee (so called agroforestry systems) provide a wide range of benefits for society as a whole, as they help to conserve biological diversity in agricultural landscapes, protect watersheds, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately these services are not fully valued by the market, although the Costa Rican government does provide a limited amount of incentives through its "Payment for Environmental Services Program." So, it is mostly the initiative of individual farmers who venture into new ways of thinking and doing business who make a real difference and can teach us how to reconcile the environmental and economic aspects of agriculture.
[post_title] => Challenges and Benefits of Growing Organic Coffee
[post_excerpt] => Today we visited Finca El Toledo, a shade-grown organic coffee farm in the hills of Atenas, owned by the Calderon family.
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[post_content] => How do you reconcile conservation and development in a developing country with a growing economy and population? That is the main theme of the first two weeks during our summer program at the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies. Of course there is more than one answer to this question. It depends on a lot of variables that are subjected to constant change. Tomorrow the world is a different one with a whole new set of challenges, priorities and opportunities. We try to show our students different perspectives and real world examples that illustrate different approaches to solve the – often perceived – conflicts between conservation of natural resources and economic development.
Packed in a small area around Carara National Park we saw the sharp contrast of pristine rainforests, exciting wildlife, and the failure of the country to manage its solid waste. This area struggles with developing a local tourism industry in the face of massive pollution. In Poás Volcano National Park we have experienced firsthand the tensions between its objectives of conserving nature and providing opportunities for recreation, which ultimately generate funds for the entire national park system. A family on a remote farm in the Caribbean lowland taught us how agro-ecological practices make their farm a success, both economically and for the conservation of the environment. It operates carbon neutral and was just selected by the government as a model farm for sustainable cattle ranching that will hopefully inspire many others.
Sustainable development means something different to different people in different places and times. However, our case studies illustrate one common aspect. Even if conservation and development appear to be in conflict, in the long run they are two faces of the very same thing: human well-being. Understanding this is an important first step towards taking action.
[post_title] => Conservation and Economic Development in Costa Rica
[post_excerpt] => How do you reconcile conservation and development in a developing country with a growing economy and population?
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[post_content] => It all started about four years ago when some of our students started to ask how sustainable the Center for Sustainable Development Studies (CSDS) actually is. In fact we already had many initiatives in place at that time; a solid recycling program, constant community outreach activities, a stakeholder-driven research agenda according to the SFS model, and others more. However, we lacked a systematic, comprehensive plan about where our sustainability efforts were going. In particular, it was hard to explain why the mango and oranges farm on our campus was completely decoupled from academic activities. At that time the farm was managed by outside contractors and from time to time signs were put up in the orchard: ‘Pesticide application – Do not enter’. Obviously we were missing a major opportunity of teaching sustainable agriculture by doing it ourselves!
We chose the Rainforest Alliance certification because it is in line with the mission of CSDS, which consists of promoting sustainable development strategies by research and education. The certification is based on social and environmental criteria defined by the Sustainable Agriculture Network. Although environmental standards may not be quite as stringent as for instance in the case of organic agriculture, the strength of the standard is that it addresses both the socioeconomic and the environmental aspects of farming in a rigorous manner.
In 2011, we became certified as a sustainable farm. The scope of the certification encompasses all areas of the Centers’ operation, from agrochemical use to fair treatment of workers, from energy use in vehicles and students’ dorms to waste water treatment, from soil conservation to occupational safety and health. We soon realized that the accomplishment of all these criteria required additional resources and efforts from each and every one of us at the Center. And according to our auditor, the hardest part was yet to come. It is easier to obtain the certification than maintaining it, because one of the requirements is continual improvement on all criteria.
This year we have successfully initiated our second three-year certification cycle. We are satisfied to see that our efforts translated into a compliance of over 90% through all annual audits so far. These efforts pay off in many ways, but perhaps the most satisfying aspect is that we can clearly demonstrate the extent to which CSDS has in fact become a model for sustainable development. It is just a lot easier to convince others – stakeholders and students – by leading with the example.
Nevertheless, sustainability is not a steady state. There is no point ‘where you’ve made it’. Whereas the first three-year period helped us to consolidate our efforts and build solid programs to implement the criteria of the standard, the second period will be focused on delivering measurable results. We will have to show for instance that we can in fact reduce our footprint in terms of energy use, water consumption, and waste production in a substantial way during the next years. The journey continues…
(Photo Credit: Emily Mikucki)
[post_title] => A Model for Sustainable Development
[post_excerpt] => It all started about four years ago when some of our students started to ask how sustainable the Center for Sustainable Development Studies (CSDS) actually is.
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[post_date] => 2014-11-24 05:00:43
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[post_content] => 
Cloud forests represent only a small fraction of tropical vegetation. Estimates range between 1 and 12% of tropical forest cover, and half of them may already be lost, fragmented, and degraded. Despite their relatively small area, they are of enormous importance. Tropical cloud forests widely overlap with biodiversity hotspots in tropical mountains. Epiphytes, such as ferns, bromeliads, and orchids cover literally every available spot from mossy tree trunks up to the heavily laden branches in the canopy. Cloud forests are also home to many endemic organisms which occur only in limited areas such as a single mountain range. The case of the Golden Toad, which suddenly disappeared from the Monteverde Reserve (and thus from the planet) in the late 1980s famously illustrates the vulnerable uniqueness of this place.
What makes cloud forests essential for us, though, is their importance for freshwater supply, especially in the seasonal tropics. Costa Rica owes a huge proportion of its drinking water, irrigated agriculture, and hydropower to its forested and cloud-bathed mountain tops. You immediately understand this when you are standing in the middle of the forest on a day like today and see the clouds, thick as smoke, swoosh through the canopy, leaving the whole mossy forest soaked and sending a cold shower of cloud water dripping down.
Photos by Joanna Parkman, Program Intern
[post_title] => Perfect Day for a Hike in the Cloud Forest
[post_excerpt] => The cloud forest doesn’t look particularly inviting this morning.
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[post_content] => During the last years an unprecedented amount of powerful, free software tools and data have become available for the analysis and visualization of geospatial information. Examples include free and open source software such as QGIS and GRASS which are used and further developed by a rapidly growing community of users. In 2008, Landsat satellite imagery at a resolution of 30m was made freely available to the public. Tens of millions of scenes have been downloaded since then all over the world and put to work for agriculture, forestry, conservation, disaster risk management, to name just a few applications. The tools and data we have at our fingertips for free today open possibilities that were hard to imagine perhaps only 10 years ago.
At the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies (CSDS), the application of GIS (geographical information systems) is an integral part of research and education. Students learn how to collect spatial data in the field and how to map, process, and analyze geospatial information. A local land-use database for the Western Central Valley was created in cooperation with Lyndon State College, Vermont, between 2008 and 2011 and has been extensively used for research purposes. We are now going to increasingly incorporate free GIS tools into research and education.
These new tools represent an opportunity to expand the scope of research at SFS CSDS. They facilitate fast and rigorous analysis of land-use change impacts on ecosystem services. Existing field data on tree diversity and carbon storage from terrestrial plots can be integrated with remote sensing imagery to assess ecosystem services on a larger spatial and temporal scale (e.g. estimates of historical and present amounts of carbon storage and tree diversity in rapidly changing landscapes). In addition, potential impacts of different future land-use change options can be modeled and valuated. The availability of free GIS software will undoubtedly enhance education at the Center. Instead of working on a temporary project, students can use data and software after the program to advance the skills that they have acquired at SFS.
Visualization of the study area, located in the Western Central Valley, showing terrain, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and protected areas. The information was derived using free software (QGIS) and free data sources (USGS digital elevation model and Landsat 8 imagery).
[post_title] => Use of GIS Software for Research and Education
[post_excerpt] => At the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies, the application of GIS is an integral part of research and education.
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[post_content] => It was about five years ago when students started to ask us: "How sustainable is the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies, anyway?" Good question. There were many different initiatives at that time, but not really a concerted effort. Besides being an educational institution, we are also a small farm with mango and orange orchards. So, we decided to become certified by the Rainforest Alliance as a sustainable farm, which ensures that we comply with a number of rigorous environmental and social criteria.
It turns out that running our own farm and maintaining the certification is a huge amount of additional work. From time to time it is good to just pause for a moment and return to the initial question. How sustainable are we? What have we achieved so far?
A few examples:
Photo: Michele Howard
Photo: Michele Howard
Photo: Peter Wedell
[post_title] => Sustainability Efforts in Costa Rica: Where Are We Now?
[post_excerpt] => How sustainable is the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies, anyway?
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[post_content] => The two main objectives of a national park are conservation of biological diversity and the provision of recreational opportunities. Unmanaged visitation can undermine both of these objectives. Manuel Antonio is currently the most visited national park in Costa Rica. Over 300,000 visitors are attracted by its magnificent tropical beaches, its accessible rainforests, and abundant wildlife, which includes endemic squirrel monkeys and sloths among many others.
A calm morning in Manuel Antonio National Park. Especially in the high season and on holidays, trails and beaches can get crowded.
The terrestrial portion of the park is relatively small (around 1,800 hectares). Urban and agricultural development increase pressure from outside the park. Massive visitation implies additional impacts on wildlife, natural resources, and ultimately, on the visitors’ experience inside the protected area. Around half of the visitors perceive some level of crowding in the park. Illegal feeding of wildlife has been a serious problem for years. As a result, species such as capuchin monkeys and raccoons have evidently altered their behavior. They mobilize astonishing levels of intelligence, skills, and aggressiveness to go after food brought by park visitors, no matter if those are interested in feeding the animals or not.
How to create a monster: Capuchin monkeys are highly intelligent. If they get habituated to people by being fed, they also become extremely aggressive.
The park administration works hard on keeping up with these challenges. Substantial resources have been invested in a complete renovation of the park infrastructure. A new management plan is just being approved. According to this plan the park administration needs to determine and enforce a tourism carrying capacity. Traditionally, protected areas in Costa Rica have applied numerical carrying capacities to control negative visitation impacts. This helps, but the problem is much more complex. More advanced concepts of carrying capacity, such as "Limits of Acceptable Change," consist of the measurement of negative impacts by quantitative indicators and setting thresholds for unacceptable levels of these impacts. Corrective management action is taken when thresholds are exceeded.
The park administration has asked the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies to assist with implementing an indicator-based carrying capacity framework. For next semester, I am planning a Directed Research project in Manuel Antonio. We will assess negative impacts on the environment and on visitors’ experiences by applying surveys and field measurements. I’m looking forward to working together with students and the park administration on this project, and I feel honored for the opportunity to work with one of the most important protected areas in Costa Rica.
The park recently has invested substantial resources in renovating its entire trail system.
[post_title] => Assessing Tourism Carrying Capacity in Costa Rica
[post_excerpt] => The park administration has asked the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies to assist with implementing a carrying capacity framework.
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[post_content] => Our Directed Research team has just come back from a stimulating week of field work at Manuel Antonio National Park on the Central Pacific coast. Manuel Antonio is one of the most spectacular sites in Costa Rica, it is easily accessible and the park has just made significant investments into improving its infrastructure. So it is not surprising that it is the most visited protected area in the country, receiving over 400,000 visitors a year. We helped the park administration to assess a tourism carrying capacity which is desperately needed, given that visitation is projected to increase further. We evaluated different indicators that measure negative impacts from visitation, such as crowding, infrastructure damage and changes in animal behavior, in our case the capuchin monkeys which are often illegally fed by visitors or just steal food from unwary visitors on the beach.
How do parks actually arrive at an estimation of numerical capacities? In theory you should establish indicators which are carefully measured and repeatedly monitored, in order to take action if thresholds of acceptable change are exceeded. You can determine limiting factors, such as potable water supply, or bottleneck areas that get crowded, if a certain number of visitors are exceeded. Sounds like solid science. But this type of research costs money and resources, which is often prohibiting for protected areas in developing countries. Parks rely on volunteers or students – like our group – to get essential tasks done. In addition, estimating a carrying capacity is far more than measurements in the field. There is a political dimension, and an economic one, there are powerful interests, as well as a wide array of values and regulations to be considered. Tourists, businesses, conservationists, government officials: everyone has different expectations and opinions on how protected areas should be used. There is pressure from all sides to increase or to lower carrying capacities, usually both at the same time, as soon as they are established. This means you need a participatory process. And you need hard criteria that can be defended in both directions. In the end this is at least as much a philosophical issue as it is a scientific one. In any case it should be kept in mind that conservation of biological diversity has the highest priority in a national park and should, if necessary, constrain other main goals, such as providing opportunities for visitation. This does not mean that carrying capacity is synonymous to a number. There are many other management options that should be fully utilized, but you may get to the point where establishing a number is necessary. Numbers should remain flexible and be adapted to future changes in the park and its environment. This is an ongoing and very exciting process that I hope to keep exploring with Costa Rican national parks and SFS students in the future.
Manuel Antonio Beach
Capuchin monkey are ‘trained’ at obtaining food from visitors. Photo by Gretchen Schulz.
→ Sustainable Development Studies in Costa Rica
[post_title] => Tourism Carrying Capacity – What Does That Mean?
[post_excerpt] => Manuel Antonio National Park receives over 400,000 visitors a year. But how many is too many?
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[post_content] => Tropical forests store 20-40% of terrestrial carbon (C) and contain 90% of all known tree species. Land use change in the tropics is one of the main causes of species loss and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On the other hand, human-modified tropical landscapes can also mitigate climate change and conserve biological diversity. The importance of managed landscapes for biodiversity conservation and C-storage is increasingly acknowledged, especially in the case of agroforestry (the integration of trees with crops or livestock).
Since 2008, the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies has been monitoring tree diversity and C-storage in the vegetation and soils of shaded coffee plantations, silvo-pastoral systems and forest fragments in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. We found that shade-grown coffee farms and pastures with trees store about 60% of the amount of C and maintain nearly 20% of the tree diversity found in natural forests. Tree species composition and diversity determine the amount of C stored, which suggests that synergies exist between tree diversity conservation and GHG mitigation.
After eight years of research, we now want to know how tree diversity and land management affect C-sequestration in vegetation and soils in the long term. A successful crowd-funding campaign on the platform experiment.com helped us to secure a part of the funds needed to continue this research throughout the next years. We are planning to establish permanent plots that differ in tree species diversity and composition within coffee farms, pastures and forests. We will install dendrometer tapes, in order to precisely monitor the growth of selected, dominant tree species with different functional traits (e.g. fast vs. slower growth rates). In addition, trees will be tagged and re-measured annually over 5 years to estimate above-ground C-sequestration. During the next 5 years we are also planning to re-sample the soils at all our research sites, which will allow us to estimate soil C-sequestration over a period of several years. We hope that the results of this research will help us to understand the relationships between tree diversity and carbon sequestration. This project is relevant for tropical regions, where the management of altered landscapes will determine the future capacity of biological systems to remain functional in terms of providing critical ecosystem services and harboring high levels of biological diversity.
→ Sustainable Development Studies in Costa Rica
[post_title] => Tree Diversity and Carbon Sequestration in a Human-Modified Landscape
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[post_content] => Students have just returned from one week of intensive data collection on several shade-grown coffee farms near Atenas. Now it will be all data analysis, writing and presentations for another two weeks. So, the fun part is over, right?
Well, definitely, the dynamic has changed. We have traded slipping down muddy slopes, hammering soil cores into the ground and measuring trees for a thicket of numbers, species lists and ecological theory. We are trying to figure out if ‘our’ coffee farms have sequestered carbon over the last 8 years. Our previous research has shown that agroforestry is great for climate change mitigation and tree species conservation, because biologically diverse farms actually store more carbon in their trees and soils, but we have not known if carbon storage is increasing or decreasing. In fact there is not too much long-term data out there anywhere on soil carbon sequestration over time in tropical agricultural systems.
Although it is early to draw even preliminary conclusions, it is exciting to see how first patterns are emerging. The accumulation (or loss) of carbon on a farm over time is not a very straightforward process, as it is determined by factors that include ecological processes but also farm management and land-use history. When students and I finally look at our data and try to untangle these processes, this is the moment when it all comes together. And yes, statistical analysis does become quite exciting when results turn out to be ‘significant’ after spending days of data collection out in the field. And if they are not, well, that’s part of the journey as well, and helps us to gain deeper insights and ask new questions. Seeing the farms, collecting the data and discussing the results to get our heads around the bigger picture of it all, and finally sharing our conclusions, is what makes this a unique learning experience for all of us.
Directed Research group with Professor Häger and botanist Agustin Contreras Arias
Student Rosemary Nicholson measuring in the field
Student Olivia Won measuring in the field
Rosemary and Olivia surveying in the field
Student Jessica McLaughlin hammering away
Serious crew doing serious work (from left to right, students Jared Mandelbaum, Hannah Corney, Jessica McLaughlin and intern Emily Blau)
→ Sustainable Development Studies in Costa Rica
[post_title] => Researching Climate Change Mitigation by Shade-Grown Coffee Farms
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[post_title] => Achim Häger, Dr. forest
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[post_content] => We are now about 4 weeks into the semester and students have just taken their first exam -- a good moment to reflect on the semester so far. We certainly have covered a lot of ground since the group arrived. From Atenas, we first traveled over to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and into its tropical rainforests. Adjacent to the forest we saw the expansion of mono-cropped pineapples and we visited a banana plantation to learn about multinational agribusiness operations in the country.
We crossed the country to the Pacific Ocean, where we saw amazing wildlife, crocodiles, scarlet macaws, poison dart frogs and mangroves near the mouth of the Tarcoles River. In this area we also experienced firsthand the consequences faced by the environment and impoverished communities due to the absence of waste management. These contrasts can teach us a lot about ways forward to sustainable development and about ourselves.
Next we went up to the mountains, looked into the crater of Poas Volcano, learned about conservation challenges from national park managers, and gathered critical visitor data for the park administration. We hiked in the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest reserve, with its moss covered “elfin forests,” and learned about the balance of impacts and benefits from the tourism industry in Costa Rica. Students further attempted to get their heads around the complexity of the cloud forest ecosystem by solving their own hypotheses during a field project in the reserve.
Six Years of Students’ Research on Sustainable Solutions for Tropical Agriculture in Costa Rica
Agriculture is a main driver of habitat destruction and biodiversity loss in the tropics. Land use change and agriculture are estimated to contribute about one third to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). On the other hand, agroecosystems offer an enormous GHG mitigation potential that we are just beginning to understand and put to work. It is also evident that successful conservation of tropical biodiversity needs to integrate rural livelihoods and human-modified landscapes. Protected areas alone are not enough. Agroforestry is one strategy to reconcile agricultural productivity with greenhouse gas mitigation and conservation goals.
An ongoing research project at the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies has been quantifying ecosystem services (mainly carbon storage and tree diversity conservation) in Costa Rican agroforestry systems for six years in cooperation with local authorities, farmer cooperatives, and land owners. Over the years approximately 100 students have collaborated with this project, working hard out there on shade-grown coffee farms, forest fragments, and silvo-pastoral systems (pastures with trees).
Fieldwork is definitely physically demanding, but I think also very rewarding, as it offers the opportunity to learn an array of research techniques, ranging from interviews with local coffee farmers to soil sampling for carbon estimations. Students learn mapping and establishing transects in the field using GPS and GIS, measuring and identifying trees and how to manage and analyze large amounts of data.
I am grateful for all the hard work done by our students over the past years. The growing database from this project helps us to propose alternative agricultural practices for tropical landscapes, at a time when it becomes increasingly obvious that business as usual is not a viable option anymore.
Photo Credit: Julie Curtis
