Remote control aerial photography in Santa Rosa National Park

"Have you ever thought about flying a small drone?" This was a question asked of me by a Missouri professor back in December when we were corresponding about my potential involvement in his course in Costa Rica (http://mucostarica.wordpress.com/)  My answer was a solid no, and at first I thought that he was asking me a hypothetical interview question. It turns out, however, that he was serious.

Cade, a senior science and agricultural journalism
student at the University of Missouri, flying the drone
from the monument in Santa Rosa.

When the professor used the word "drone," he was referring to a small remote controlled quadcopter with a built-in camera—more of a hobbyist's toy than a piece of military technology. These gadgets capture images and videos with potential applications in journalism, biological research, and conservation. 

The catch is that the FAA prohibits drone use for journalistic purposes in the US. Seeking a way to continue experimenting with drone journalism, the professor arranged for one of his students, Cade, to spend four days capturing aerial photos and footage in Santa Rosa National Park.

I came along to accompany Cade—showing him around the park, translating, and assisting in small ways like adjusting the tilt of the camera or deciding when to take stills using Cade's iPod, which received wireless signal from the drone.

The plot on the left side of the road has been burned yearly
for several decades, while the forest on the right began as pasture
but was protected from fire.

We flew the drone over three fire plots, a firebreak, the canopy of the Bosque Húmedo (a patch of primary dry forest), the dry waterfall of Quebrada Costa Rica, the hilltop monument of the battles of 1856 and 1955, the lookout over Witch's Rock, and the mangroves in Cuajiniquil.

We also crashed the drone three times, not including a short fall when Cade was teaching me how to fly. Luckily, we were able to fly the drone on all four days. In between excursions to take video and photos, we had the chance to explore Santa Rosa and check out all kinds of critters: tarantulas, tree frogs, great currasows, white-tailed deer, and a tamandua.

Besides just being a lot of fun, our drone flying excursions taught us some lessons about the possibilities for drone applications in the Guanacaste Conservation Area: 1) drones can fly in fairly strong winds, but it is best not to fly them too close to branches; 2) if flown in the right places, drones might be able to help with fire detection during the dry season; 3) drone photography may be useful for research involving tree crowns, such as studies on caterpillars or epiphytes; and 4) drone images are great for adding a sense of context, perspective and scale to stories about the park, whether those stories are in the form of newspaper articles, videos, or slideshows.

Cade is still processing footage from the trip, but I am hoping to have more aerial photos to share with you soon.

Armored car from the Rafael Calderon's attempted invasion
of Costa Rica in 1955.

Central american coral snake (Micrurus nigrocinctus ) between the two dorm
buildings in Santa Rosa.

Marbled tree frog, Phrynohyas venulosa (I think)

Looking toward Rincon de la Vieja from the monument
in Santa Rosa.

Journey through the Bellbird Biological Corridor

Looking up toward Cerro Amapala and Cerro San Antonio
from the turnoff to San Luis. The block of forest in the middle of the
picture is "Chepe Rojas," or the San Luis Biological Reserve.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to accompany a group of students from the University of Missouri School of Journalism on a field trip through the Bellbird Biological Corridor. Three-wattled bellbirds are not actually in the corridor at the moment (some are in the Caribbean lowlands, as far away as Nicaragua), so the focus of the trip was more about the social and ecological connections along the watersheds than about any specific species.

University of Missouri journalists walk
down to the Guacimal River at Rancho del Río.

The corridor contains 66,000 hectares, 13 life-zones, and about 30,000 people in over 25 communities, so connection has multiple meanings. In addition to facilitating altitudinal migrations for species like the three-wattled bellbird, the corridor provides a framework for approaching watersheds holistically. On the way down to the Gulf of Nicoya, we crossed the Guacimal River four times.                                                                                                                                                                               The first was immediately below the cheese factory in Monteverde, where historically whey was dumped directly in the stream and occasional leaks turn the water milky gray. The second was near the confluence with the San Luis river, whose clean waters likely help to dilute the run-off from Cerro Plano, Santa Elena and the pig farm. Before crossing for the third time, we stopped for lunch at Rancho del Río, a rural tourism project run by my former neighbor Veronica and her husband Alexander. Their cabin and farm are located along a stretch of the river that has numerous swimming holes and appears to be habitat for neotropical river otters.

                                                                

Veronica and Alex informed us about three concessions that will draw worrying quantities of water from the Veracruz River (one of cleanest tributaries of the Guacimal) for irrigation of monocrops in the lowlands. An obsolete law allows for more than 80 percent of a river's flow to be diverted, and it is estimated that the Veracruz River will be left with only 15 percent of its current volume. I assume that this figure pertains to the dry season, since irrigation is not necessary during the rainy season, but with the increase in dry days in the cloud forest, I wouldn't be surprised if demand were to increase.

The citizens of Guacimal are organizing themselves to file a "recurso de amparo," so the battle isn't over.

I was excited to learn that Alexander had three colonies of stingless bees: two mariola box hives and a log with the larger jicote estrella. Alex has actually never extracted honey from the jicote nest, but apparently the mariola honey is tasty and good as a topical treatment for eye ailments. In the coming days I may return to Rancho del Río to work with Alex to build a specialized box for the mariolas and take a look at the inside of the nest.

Jicote estrella (Melipona beecheii), also called royal bees, sealing a crack in their log nest.
The Maya raised this species, even performing special ceremonies to honor the bees.

Stuart, age 11, showed me the entrance tube of a mariola colony on the trunk of a pochote (spiny cedar) in a cattle pasture.

   

                                                                                                     

One of the legs of a ceramic vessel: a reminder that people
have been living in this corridor for thousands of years.

We crossed the river a third time in Guacimal, where irrigation allows farmers to grow crops and keep some of their pastures green during the dry season. The fourth time that we crossed the Guacimal River was on the panamerican highway, and large pineapple plantations along the road hinted at the intended destination of water from the Veracruz.

A magnificent frigate bird over the boat ramp at Punta Morales.

Cultural, economic and geographical differences between human communities in the corridor contribute to a feeling of fragmentation. What does it take to integrate biologists, hotel owners, coffee farmers, cattle ranchers, pineapple growers and artisanal fishers? Whose corridor is this, anyway?

I think that water— its quantity and quality—will be one of the greatest catalysts for action and collaboration (and perhaps conflict, too) when it comes to addressing the connections and disconnections between the cloud forest and the sea.

Intro to the blog, stingless bees, and a visit to Reserva Biológica San Luis

I will admit up front that my dad came up with the title of this blog, tropical derelict being a term that he often uses in reference to himself. The noun derelict, not to be confused with delinquent, means "a person without a home, a job, or property." Yes, it's hyperbolic, but it is true that in the coming months I will be away from home and technically unemployed.

From late January to early May, I will be living in southern Nicaragua and volunteering with Paso Pacifico, working on a project supporting the raising of stingless bees (a practice called meliponiculture) and helping with their Junior Rangers environmental education programs. Part of this will entail helping youngsters collect data on the nesting behavior of yellow-naped amazon parrots.

I have been reading up on stingless bee ecology and stingless bee keeping, as well as trying to observe the bees here in Monteverde. My first memory of stingless bees is a failed attempt at extracting honey from a nest in an old guava tree when I was about seven years old. This involved putting a balloon on the end of a section of PVC and climbing the tree, with the intention of sticking the tube into the nest and celebrating as honey flowed into the balloon. The actual outcome was that the bees swarmed around my head and tangled in my hair, gripping individual hairs and pulling on them (this is a classic defense mechanism for stingless bees). I proceeded to run home and pour cold water over my head to dislodge the bees... My enthusiasm for stingless bees has not diminished, but my approach has become a bit more sophisticated.

Pollen of Inga punctata, a leguminous tree.

One of my hopes for my work with the meliponiculture project is to assess the floral resources that the bees are using. This would both provide evidence for ecosystem services (say, the pollination of crops such as coffee, bell pepper and citrus trees) and detect plants that might be worth integrating into agroforestry systems for the sake of honey production.

Pollen of Sida sp. a malvaceous herb.

In addition to observing flowering plants to see if they are visited by stingless bees, I hope to make a pollen image library for the plants in flower during the time that I am in Nicaragua. In the past few days I've gotten hooked on looking at pollen under a microscope, and at left you can get a glimpse of the diverse shapes the grains come in.















Here are some photos from a hike in "Chepe Rojas," a reserve protecting a piece of the middle-elevation forest that has become scarce on the Pacific slope in the Tilarán mountains.

Stream crossing at Quebrada San Francisco.

Tree frog camouflaged on a rock along the bank of theSan Luis River.

Vanilla vine (Vanilla planifolia) growing wild on a guava tree
in the San Luis reserve.

I will leave you with a video of "mariola" bees (Tetragonisca angustula) coming and going from a hive in San Luis. Cute, right?