Watershed Protection at TFI | New TFI Nursery | 2007 Internship Report | Understory Species Richness | Boyce Thompson researchers help to rescue a rainforest | Photos
Watershed Protection at TFI
Mary Jawlick, TFI farm manager
Projects abound at TFI, as we extend our reach further into the community and attempt to integrate reforestation techniques and watershed protection. Water is something we all depend on, not just for drinking, but for cattle, vegetation and climate. Soil and water are the foundation of all life and resources that are essential to our survival. Without their protection and conservation, severe environmental degradation ensues. Cattle pasturing is the main form of income in the Guabo Valley where TFI is located. Trees have been eliminated from these landscapes, including the banks of rivers and streams.
Leaving waterways unprotected and exposed, makes them extremely susceptible to erosion. In fact, even the smallest rainfalls will turn deforested streams brown with sediment from surrounding fields. As streams funnel into rivers, massive amounts of soil are lost. Such soil leaving the pastures is the very fertility of the land. Every rain event brings about a further loss of fertility. A professor of mine once told me as we watched the Rio Guabo from the bridge in Trés Piédras, "Mary, there goes the future of Costa Rica down the river."
Denuded river and stream banks result in immediate drinking water contamination. Cattle wastes enter the water, making it unsuitable for drinking. Likewise, without the shade provided by vegetation cover, water is exposed to the sun's evaporative power. It is not uncommon to find such streams dried up in the dry season, while forested streams run strong with water. In this valley, people have temporarily solved the problem by piping in potable water from high up on the ridge where a water source lies in a primary forest. But what will happen as development expands and this water is inadequate to supply the population?
It is extremely important to protect the valley's watersheds,
as the future of the people that live here depend on them. However, education
is essential before any actions can be taken. The immediate need to feed
their families often inhibits them from looking very far into the future.
TFI, in association with ASANA (a local environmental organization), is
hoping to account for these needs while encouraging watershed protection
and reforestation. This process will begin with community meetings where
we will collaborate with local landowners to develop initiatives that
will work in their best interest. We will provide trees free of cost to
any Costa Rican who wishes to reforest, while helping with the labor of
planting.
A progressive Costa Rican government program provides a significant financial
reward for every tree planted on a landowner's property. Given that the
trees will be free, local Costa Ricans can earn a substantial sum of money
by reforesting. We hope that through education and this government program,
there will be enough incentive to reforest waterways. Any further reforestation
will be greatly encouraged.
This year we have planted more than 1000 trees along previously denuded waterways. We hope plant significantly more in the years to come as this initiative takes hold and spreads!
The New Nursery at TFI
Mary Jawlick, facility manager
TFI Work Crew
Ornamentals and fruit trees comprise the makings of a new nursery at TFI. We are expanding our repertoire, while keeping our main nursery of reforestation and hardwood species. By diversifying our supply and promoting other species, we hope to provide a source for landscapers, as well as for those who wish to do more to attract animals to their property. They hope to draw animal species into the valley by providing them with a food source. We plan to add a few species ourselves to the TFI property in the hopes of creating a corridor for monkeys that will extend from Lagunas to the Rio Guabo. Jobo fruits attract monkeys, peccaries, various bird species and many other animals. Breadfruit is a favorite among pacas. Likewise, we are currently planting flowering plants that will attract hummingbirds, butterflies, and even Scarlet macaws!
Fruit tree grafting is quite an art and we are currently learning from an expert in the field and experimenting on our own. In the next few months, we hope to have several hundred trees of a dozen different varieties available for sale. These native plants will serve not only to beautify a property and provide fresh fruit, but will help to attract many animals that have become sparse in the valley.
The Tilapia are Back!
We have restocked the pond and created a second pool for the propagation
of tilapia. These beautiful pink fish grow more than a foot in length
and can weigh more than 1.5 kilos. Since starting with 20 in March, 2007
we now have hundreds of tilapia happily swimming about. In a few months,
they will be a steady food source to visitors at TFI, and will be sold
at the San Isidro Farmers Market and to surrounding communities. Tilapia
are vegetarian and require little more than a constant moving water source
(oxygen) and a little shade. With fish food and the occasional rice leftovers,
these guys are plumping right up!
The fish culture trend has spread throughout Trés
Piedras, as at least three other families have made their own tilapia
ponds. These tasty fish are easy to care for and provide a great local
protein source! Dinner's on!
2007 Internship Report
Dick Andrus
This past summer (2007) at TFI, the intern group headed by Dr. Andrus of SUNY Binghamton consisted of nine students from his home university, plus one from Cornell University and three from the work college of Warren Wilson. The students were: Michael Parish, Kieran Seay, Marisol Maddox, Julie Morrissey, Briana Hauff, Alexander Mott, Stephanie Craig, Colleen Feeney, Alicia Caruso, Gillian Paul, Aubrey DeLone, Heather Aziz and Julia Mead. A quarter of the way through the four-week session the students were joined by a butterfly expert, Jeremy Lombardo, who studied the variety of butterflies around TFI.
Along with periodic bouts of tree-planting as a service to neighboring
Ticos, the students would work in separate groups on projects that the
professor devised on their behalf.
The first group had to prepare for Jeremy's experiments. First, they rigged
butterfly traps by attaching netting to boards and hanging the contraptions
in scattered locations. Every few days the team would add food (rotten
fruit ) to the traps and take notes on the butterflies they caught. According
to their notes they found thirty different species of butterfly, with
the greatest diversity in secondary forest. This accounts only for the
butterflies that spend most of their time in the understory and happen
to be fond of alcohol produced by rotten fruit.
Another group did construction around the farm area. Students experimented
with building stairs that would be resistant to erosion and storm water.
They also built a second tilapia (a food fish) pond in one corner of the
property. Though they built it well, Mother Nature helped us test it when
she hit us with twelve inches of water in the space of twenty-four hours
that flooded us. Though the walls of the pond got knocked down, when the
students looked the next morning they found most of the fish still swimming
around the bottom.
We knew that twelve inches of rain fell thanks to the students who set
up rain gauges at different sites on the property. They found measurable
differences in precipitation due to the amounts of foliage and evapotranspiration
levels.
In Costa Rica and much of the Central and South American countries, farming
practices altered the landscape. The infiltration crew found that it took
hours longer for water to sink into the ground that had been farmed than
it did in a healthy forest floor. A couple of students ended up looking
into a hypothesis on what happens if farmed land is abandoned. A massive
colony of vines and ferns springs up, leaving scientists wondering what
this means for the surrounding forest. Some vines appear to grow at very
fast rates, but the students are not yet sure of the growth limits.
Many of these projects will continue for several summers. There is always
the additional job of bagging soil for seeds in the nursery. When a good
supply of seedlings was available, the students loaded the trucks and
took them to neighboring properties to plant and, it is hoped, to promote
biodiversity.
Around TFI there was a never-ending stream of interesting events. Once
in the middle of dinner, the girls on side of the table began yelling,
one by one, and I looked under the table just in time to lift up my feet
and avoid having the enormous, but beautifully colored locust crawl over
my toes.
Having lectures outside left us vulnerable to the surrounding wildlife.
One time the class got to take a toucan break. Another time one of our
friends, Mary, came to the table to inform the group that there were some
white-faced Capuchin monkeys by the upper cabins throwing stuff on the
roofs.
Every day was unique at TFI during the successful internship of July 2007.
Understory
Species Richness during Restoration of Wet Tropical Forest in Costa Rica
(pdf)
A paper by A. Carl Leopold and Jackeline Salazar
Published in the March 2007 issue of ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
Boyce Thompson researchers
help to rescue a rainforest
By Beth Skwarecki
Half a century after most of Costa Rica's rainforests were cut down, researchers
from the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Sciences (BTI) on the Cornell
campus are attempting what many thought was impossible - restoring a tropical
rainforest ecosystem.
When the researchers planted worn-out cattle pastures in Costa Rica with
a sampling of local trees in the early 1990s, native species of plants
began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rainforests
can one day be replaced.
Ten years after the tree plantings, Cornell graduate student Jackeline
Salazar YEAR OF HER PHD? counted the species of plants that took up residence
in the shade of the new planted areas. She found remarkably high numbers
of species -- more than 100 species in each plot. And many of the new
arrivals are ones that also live in nearby remnants of the original forests.
"By restoring forests we hope not only improving the native forests,
but we helping to control erosion, and helping the quality of life of
the local people," said Carl Leopold, the William H. Crocker Scientist
Emeritus at BTI. He said that drinking-water becomes more available when
forests thrive because the tree roots act as a sort of sponge, favoring
rainwater seepage instead of running off hills and draining away.
Fully rescuing a rainforest may take hundreds of years, but Leopold, whose
findings are published with Salazar in the March 2008 issue of Ecological
Restoration, said the study's results are promising. "I'm surprised,"
he said. "We're getting impressive growth rates in the new forest
trees."
The project started when Leopold partnered with colleagues at the Tropical
Forestry Initiative; in 1993 they began by planting mixtures of trees
on worn-out pasture land . For 50 years the soil had been compacted under
countless hooves, and its nutrients washed away. When it rained, Leopold
says, the red soil appeared to bleed from the hillsides.
The group chose local rainforest trees for planting, collecting seeds
from native trees in the community. "You can't buy seeds," Leopold
said. "So we passed the word around among our farmer neighbors."
When a farmer reported a tree producing seeds, Leopold and his wife would
ride out on horses to collect the seeds before hungry monkeys beat them
to it.
The group planted mixtures of local tree species, trimming away the pasture
grasses until the trees could take hold. This was the opposite of what
commercial companies have done for decades, planting entire fields with
a single type of tree to harvest for wood or paper pulp.
The trees the group planted were fast-growing, sun-loving species. After
just five years those first trees formed a canopy of leaves that shaded
out the grasses underneath.
"One of the really amazing things is that our fast-growing tree species
are averaging 2 meters of growth per year," Leopold said. He believes
that microscopic soil fungi called mycorrhizae can take much of the credit.
They have apparently survived in the soil and form a symbiosis with tree
roots. Research at Cornell and BTI, he said, has shown that without mycorrhizae,
many plants can't grow well.
The promising results of the project mean that mixed-species plantings
can help jump-start a complex rainforest. Local farmers who use the same
approach will reduce erosion of their land, while creating a forest that
can be harvested sustainably, a few trees at a time.
.
Beth Skwarecki is a freelance writer in Ithaca.
Oxen team pulling out Mayo colorado from Los Arboles.
Logging team with Mayo colorado at Los Arboles
Michael Murrell from East Carolina University painting local birds on
one of the TFI buildings.
Michael's paintings