This spring break, I led a group of about 15 Harrison Scholars to Costa Rica. I have been teaching in Costa Rica for almost 20 years and it is one of my favorite places to visit. I'm an interdisciplinary ecologist and Costa Rica is the perfect place to experience hands-on a look at the amazing biodiversity in the tropics, the impacts of human activity on natural systems, and the chance for our group to experience Costa Rica culture. On this trip, Dr. Mark Boardman, Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences, accompanied us. My good friend Dr. Marco Odio, a native Costa Rica naturalist extraordinare, acted as our guide. Marco also provided our students with unique interactions and the perspectives of a native Costa Rican. Marco also arranged a visit to an inner city San Jose elementary school, where we were fortunate to be able to plant a vegetable garden. Food grown from the garden will help provide meals for the children that attend this school. Our group owes Marco a big thanks!
Costa Rica is a small country about the size of West Virginia. The country disbanded their military over 50 years ago and is a thriving democracy that focuses much of their national budget on education and medical care. The people are very politically outspoken and it is not uncommon to have 60-70% of the electorate participate in elections. The country's prime sources of revenue include ecotourism and the export of agricultural products such as coffee, bananas, and pineapples.
About one-quarter of the country is set aside in fantastic national parks and private preserves. We visited Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve and Arenal Volcano. Monteverde Preserve is a world famous park noted for its unique species and extraordinary could forest. The preserve also serves a world model for species conservation efforts. The contrast between the protected parks and the surrounding landscape could not be more extreme. For instance, at Monteverde Preserve, the park is a green island of forest bordered by a landscape that has experienced massive deforestation, particularly on the Pacific Ocean side. To give you an example of how biologically diverse Monteverde cloud forest is, during a recent Christmas Bird count, over 450 bird species were identified in a two day period! This is over half of the bird species in all of North America in a small preserve in a country in the size of West Virginia!
At Arenal volcano, we visited an area that had "impact craters" from volcanic bombs that were blasted from the 1968 eruption and thrown over 5 kilometers to the impact site. The original bombs were destroyed upon impact leaving the craters behind. The largest craters were over 7 meters across! Here's a harrison moment: Two of the students decided to calculate the terminal velocity of the volcanic bombs when they impacted to form the craters. Iordan and Hesam whipped out their calculators and proceeded to calculate a variety of terminal velocities of the volcanic bombs based upon the trajectory angle that the boulders had when they were initially exploded out of the volcano. As a professor, I love it when students connect to what we're seeing, doing or discussing. This was one of those moments!
We hope to have many more Harrison trips in the future. To view photos and movies from the trip, go here:
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/harrisons/costarica07/TOC.html
Best, Hays
Dr. Hays Cummins
Harrison Scholar Professor
Director of Environmental Programs
Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
