Mr. Lafond in Puerto Rico

Friday, June 1, 2007

Today, we ventured into the rainforest one last time as an Earthwatch team. We continued to measure trees. I was working with an Australian woman, and a college professor from Albany, NY. Our task was to once again use the clinometer to determine the height of the largest hardwood trees in the forest. While I stayed on task and managed to record measurements for almost 50 trees, we occasionally got distracted by forest creatures, like this stick bug below. There is something unique about the stick bugs here... I think they like me because I keep finding them on me. After we hiked back to the research station, some of us went for a swim in the river. One last night to exchange stories, then we are heading out tomorrow.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Friday and Saturday Plan

Tomorrow is our last day in the forest collecting data. We will then come back and debrief the information we collected and ask questions of the scientists. On Saturday, our time in the jungle comes to an end. I have really enjoyed being here and learning about this amazing place, but I am ready to return home (my pillow seems to make a better sponge!) Before I head home, though, I will be spending one night in Old San Juan to get the feel for city life here in Puerto Rico. Then, I will be on a flight back to Boston on Sunday.

I just figured out how to add some of my video clips to this blog...they are located on the right. They are linked from youtube.com, but there is no need to go the site. They will play directly in the blog. Don't worry if you can't play them, I will show them to you when I get back next week.

The first video is of a n anolis lizard hanging out on a palm tree. The lizard doesn't do much, but you can get an idea of how still they are. With luck, more to come, enjoy!

Webcast! (attempt)

This morning we tried to do a webcast from the research station in the PR rainforest to the Kiwi Team at Curtis Middle School in Sudbury, MA. It is a pretty amazing idea... and it worked for the most part. There were some difficulties with knowing if/how/when the students could hear me, but overall, I think it went well.

Here I am doing the webcast from an outside table. It stopped raining long enough for us to do it, but we kept getting disconnected... this is life when relying on satellites.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Successful frog survey!

We found hundreds, if not thousands, of frogs on our survey. We tried our best to count all the frogs in a 100 meter section of the rainforest. The total numbers have not been calculated yet... but it took us three hours to do the survey. Check out the pictures below. In addition to frogs, we found other creatures too.

Looking for little frogs...Watch your step!

One of the more dangerous creatures in the rainforest... a scorpion! It's only about two inches long, but I was sure to avoid it.

Another amazing stick bug. This one really wanted its picture taken!

Yes, the coqui do come in small sizes! This is a baby coqui that we found on the forest floor.

Adult male coqui frog (about 2 inches long)

Monday, May 28, 2007

Gabcast #2

Gabcast! Mr. Lafond in Puerto Rico #2

And... here comes the rain!

After a couple dry days, all the visitors here (including myself) were beginning to wonder why they call this a "rain" forest. Well, today I got a taste. I awoke to heavy rains at 4 a.m. and then it continued most of the day. Despite making the steep forested slopes extremely slippery, the rain didn't stop us from trekking into the forest to collect more data. Equipped with rain gear and waterproof notebooks, we surveyed an acre of forest. I worked with another teacher on the trip, Ms. Matheson, to determine of how wide the canopy of the largest trees are. This wasn't an easy job since every time we looked up we would get large rain drops in the face. As you could guess, we had fun getting wet and muddy.

Hiking in the forest... ready for the rain!