Meet Meredith

Sarah: When we returned to Costa Rica from our trip to the States at the end of September, our new intern arrived at the same time. We were excited to be able to promote the internship position after having such a positive experience with Peter last year, and even more excited when one of our former students and friends, Meredith, applied.

So, meet Meredith. We first got to know Meredith during our first year down here, during the first semester program SNU ever did at QERC. She was part of the guinea pig group - the group that was able to hold onto their class schedule from SNU while living at QERC for the spring semester. To supplement their SNU workload, QERC joined up with the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) for certain aspects of the semester in order to give the students more of a cross-cultural experience. Meredith enjoyed her experience so much that semester that when the following year rolled around, she actually decided to participate in our second semester program. As the program was developing and becoming more of a formal program with actual classes IN Costa Rica, Meredith was able to take advantage of the opportunity to study again at QERC with new classes and new experiences and hardly any overlap. Through both of these semester programs (8 months total!), we were able to get to know Meredith very well.

When graduation hit for Meredith and she was still contemplating what to do with her life (and still is!), a year-long internship at QERC seemed like the perfect fit. Meredith is using this year to figure out which venue she wants to pursue and she is able to put to good use her passions while being a great asset to furthering the development of projects we have going on at QERC.

While Meredith is here for almost 8 months, she is both developing her own projects to work on as well as fitting into projects we already have going on. She often works outside in the sunny mornings to help David with the native plant demonstration around the building, and he is grateful to have the extra help. In the afternoons she has been helping with the development of the museum. We are thrilled to have an extra hand around here and are extremely hopeful that with her help we can get the museum in a very presentable state (one that we don't have to say is "in progress") by the beginning of the semester program in January. These are two projects we have been working on basically ever since we took this job and we have high hopes of seeing them to completion this year!

One project Meredith is developing is basically an audit of the sustainability practices here at QERC. She is picking apart each aspect of energy and products being used at QERC and developing ways we can be more environmentally conscious of our actions. We are excited to hopefully implement some of her suggested changes already this year, and suggest long-term changes for future years.

Once the semester program starts in January, we will rely on Meredith to take on some staff responsibilities to help take the weight off our shoulders. We are thankful for her help and glad that she already has the experience of two semesters under her belt in order to step up and take on a new role during the program. Aside from all the work that Meredith is contributing to QERC, it's fun for David and me to have someone around to interact with and spend our evenings with. :)

One other exciting thing for us to share is how we have created our own version of a CSA here in Costa Rica. A family that we've gotten to know quite well that live in the next valley over have a very impressive farm that is completely organic. Every time we visit them we are overwhelmed by their generosity in loading us up with fresh fruits and vegetables. We were just there visiting a couple weeks ago and asked if they would be interested in selling us a basket of fresh produce every 2 weeks. The idea is that they would drop the basket off at the truck stop at the top of the hill every other Friday afternoon, and we would leave the money and pick up the basket the following Saturday morning. They were excited about the idea of supplying us with whatever produce they had on hand, and of course we were thrilled with the arrangement as well. This past Saturday we picked up our first basket and were dumbfounded at the array of fruits and veggies we received - many of which we'd never even seen or heard of before. This load only cost us around $12.00! The family was kind enough to even supply us with some recipes for some of the food we didn't know what to do with. We are excited to continue with this new arrangement!

El Botanico

David: A very important part of developing quality research and education at QERC is having talented and motivated partners who are interested in progressing the conservation mission of QERC. Over the past year SNU has developed one such relationship with a researcher/ professor from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Bruce Hoagland is a faculty member of the OU Geography Department and coordinator of the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory (www.oknaturalheritage.ou.edu). Around here I introduced him as un botanico y un experto con orquideas because botany is his area of study and he is indeed an expert on orchids. Bruce spent two weeks here at QERC in February as exploratory time to see what possibilities there might be at QERC, and most recently he just departed a few days ago after spending two and a half weeks with us working on several projects. The two and a half weeks that Bruce just spent with us were full of a lot of field time, hard work, and good company. We had three main projects to work on: 1)QERC orchidarium 2)aguacatillo phenology study 3)QERCnet weather stations.

Being that Bruce is an orchid enthusiast and orchidologist by trade, the vast numbers of orchids found in our forests here in San Gerardo de Dota kept him on his toes. One of his ideas that will support our efforts of both education and research is the construction of a structure to house orchids that have fallen from their epiphytic homes and land on the forest floor. The orchidarium, or orchidario in Spanish, will be a home to place those fallen orchids and use them as an educational tool. Their close proximity to our station also will allow students and researchers to conveniently study flowering, fruiting, and pollintating of the species we will have represented. The picture above shows the beginnings of the orchidarium. Upon Bruce's next trip in Janauary we will erect the final structure to provide nice shade for the plants. The picture below the orchidarium is of one of our prize orchids that is flowering at the moment.

The aguacatillo phenology study is one that you should be somewhat familiar with as I've written about it in the past. Bruce is coming along side QERC to help us organize and streamline this study in order to produce some long-term assessment of how the topography and climate of our location affect the flowering and fruiting cycle of these important trees. You probably remember that the quetzals are very much linked to the fruiting cycle of these trees. Bruce will be a very important partner for the future in analyzing the data that has been collected over the past 15 years and ensuring that the research and monitoring moves forward in the right direction. So while he was here I was able to give him an introduction to the many trees that we have relocated in the past year. During the time we spent visiting the trees we brainstormed methods and protocols for how the data collection should be done. One bit of information I learned is that new tree growth coming off the main trunk that creates a secondary trunk is officially called a "sucker." As you can imagine we saw some skinny suckers, big suckers, and even a group of suckers. The situation would become tense when one of us would sternly state, "Watch out for those suckers!"

The QERCnet is a very exciting research infrastructure project that has been developed cooperatively between Bruce and SNU. If you are familiar with the topography of San Gerardo de Dota you know that the mountains are steep with many ridges creating many small valleys and elevation changes very quickly as you move around anywhere. As the QERCnet is continually developed more and more, independent climate monitoring stations will be set at intervals of 25 meters of elevation change in a way that would resemble someone casting a fishing net over the topography of the Chacons private forest preserve. The long term value of this for QERC has many applications in research. We will be able to see patterns in the movement of air and moisture through the labyrinth of contours in the mountains. We'll start piecing together information on the climate of micro-habitats which will undoubtedly aid in explaining why plants grow successfully where they are growing and why animals are choosing space to use utilize. One other very exciting application is that the current line of equipment we are preparing to install will start in the primary forest and move down into an area of successional growth that once was pasture land and is reforesting itself. As data is collected over the years we will be able to see how the reforestation process slowly changes the climate of the land. It's commonly known that clear-cutting natural vegetation will affect the weather cycle and it will be very exciting to be able to track this change over the years as the forest returns to normal, which could take up to 200-500 years. So there is the idea, and while Bruce was here we spent many, many hours wielding machetes in order to bushwhack our way through vegetation to find the optimum placement for these upcoming 7 stations. We made very good progress and hope that by the end of January all 7 stations will be installed and collecting data.

And finally, in the spirit of orchid enthusiasm, we leave you with some orchid pictures that we snapped at the Lankester Botanical Gardens which we visited with Bruce on his way back into San Jose.

To the States and back again

Sarah: About a week ago we returned to Costa Rica after yet another trip to the United States. We spent the majority of the month of September traveling to different parts of the U.S. doing some recruiting for our spring semester program.

We began our trip with about a week in Oklahoma at Southern Nazarene University, and our time was very full with lots of meetings, planning sessions, classroom speaking engagements, student meetings, and reuniting with our former students who are still on campus. The QERC program has developed enough and we've recruited enough over the past few years that this year (the 4th year for the program) we could really see a difference - instead of trying to encourage students to participate THIS year, we found ourselves encouraging the freshmen to plan the QERC semester program into their college schedule. There are already a handful of SNU students signed up and ready to participate this year, due to the reputation of the program and our recruiting efforts in past years. The meetings and planning sessions also went extremely well and the program continues to develop and become even more organized with each semester.

Being at SNU is always a fun time to reunite with our friends - both those on faculty and also those students who are still around. We enjoyed a barbecue and a number of lunches with the faculty and had a good time of sharing what progress is happening at QERC, and our evenings were filled with dinners out and hanging out with former students by playing Rock Band, Wii, Nuke 'Em, and Go-Karts.

Though this particular trip to the States was strictly business and no scheduled family visits, my parents made the long drive down from Iowa to meet up with us one weekend while we were in Oklahoma. Even though the time went fast with them, we were really appreciative of them making the effort to see us while in the States - it makes the stretch between summer and Christmas seem not quite as long! (I have a feeling they made the drive partly due to the fact that the next time we see them we will have their granddaughter in our hands and my belly is growing steadily at this point!)

From SNU we traveled out to Point Loma Nazarene University, in San Diego, California. This quick trip (2 1/2 days) was also very full - more meetings, more recruiting, and student gatherings. Point Loma's campus is beautiful and it's always fun to walk around and be able to see the ocean from campus! We had some great positive feedback from the faculty, and they are very excited to share the program with their students in the hopes of getting their school involved either this year or next year.

From Point Loma we headed up to Nampa, Idaho, where we spent the next few days at Northwest Nazarene University (David's alma mater). This visit included more classroom speaking engagements, and of course more meetings. Last year we had one NNU student involved with the program, and due to his excitement about the program upon his return to campus and also due to the faculty support, the student response was overwhelming. We should see at least a few students participating in the program this upcoming spring, and freshmen are already planning it into their schedules for future years.

Being up at NNU is always fun also because it gives us an excuse to meet up with some friends who live in the area. We had a great time reconnecting with old friends in the midst of our productive time on campus. And as we planned having a weekend at NNU, David's parents and his older sister and her 3 kids drove down to meet up with us. Like with my family, it was a short time, but well worth it. We were thankful to see them and be able to spend some good hours of quality time together.

From NNU, we traveled over to Chicago, Illinois, to Olivet Nazarene University. This was our first time recruiting on their campus and our first time of actually introducing the QERC semester program to their faculty and students. The faculty seemed to be very receptive, and right away the student interest was high. Though we were mainly looking to set the stage for involvement in the years to come, we are fairly hopeful that we may have student participation from Olivet as early as this spring.

From Olivet, David headed back to SNU for some wrap-up meetings and I headed to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to visit my sister and her 5-week old baby Asher. It was fun to meet my new cute nephew and also spend some good quality time with my sister and her husband. As my due date keeps getting closer and closer, it was a little reality check to see what life with a newborn is like. :) I was really thankful for the time I had to spend with them while Asher is still a young baby!

Finally, I flew from Chattanooga to Oklahoma and met up with David, and we had one last night in the States saying goodbye to students and packing up our things to head back to Costa Rica. While our time in the States was both very productive and also very enjoyable, it is nice to be back in our home for a much longer stretch of time as we have lots of work to be done in preparation for January...and that whole giving birth thing. This picture is of me at 32 weeks.