By Ally Harrison

The UGA Costa Rica campus is a beautiful environmentally friendly place. It has inspired me to share its knowledge of sustainability. Sustainability means that we do not use more than we produce. It’s all about balance. We give; we take. We do this in order to maintain a good relationship with our environment. UGACR accomplishes sustainability is several ways:

These are all reducing our impact on the environment. How can I continue this when I get back to Athens? How can I be sustainable; I can’t afford $6,000 solar panels? Fret not for I have come up with some small ways in which a college student can become more sustainable. One of the easiest ways to start your environmentally friendly journey is to go to your local farmers’ market. This way you can get organic, natural foods without pesticides. Not only is this

environmentally sustainable but it’s also economically sustainable. It’s even better if you bring empty jars or canvas bags so that you don’t use any wasteful packaging.

During our tour of the bio digester, Fabricio (UGACR director) offered something interesting; he said, “Ask yourself, ‘What would nature do?’ And that was a great way to look at sustainability. Next time you go for a snack, think “What would nature do?” Instead of reaching for a bag of chips (with no nutritional value and packaging that adds to your waste), grab an orange. The peel is nature’s packaging.

Lastly, this step has two parts: grow a garden and start a compost pile. The garden can grow fruits, veggies, and herbs to make you more self-sustaining and can save you money at the grocery store. The compost pile can be used to fertilize your new garden. A compost pile can consist of things like food scraps, paper towels, and coffee filters which reduces your amount of waste. Now, I’m not saying you have to do all of these things, but even doing one of these tips is a step towards a more sustainable lifestyle. For more ideas, visit https://sustainability.uga.edu/.

By: Alizah Garvin and Kiara Bussey

We toured an organic coffee farm a short distance from campus in the forest few weeks of the semester. The coffee farm is owned by Odemar who prides himself on making organic shade grown coffee. The land was given to his family by the Quakers under the conditions that they maintain the land and its natural resources. Most of the farms do not use chemicals or fertilizers and they were certified as organic farmers after completing a 3-year process. So far they have planted 18,000 trees in the area and even installed irrigations systems. Odemar’s farm was the most reforested out of all the land that was given. His coffee farm uses the surrounding environment to protect the plants against pests. He plants fruit trees in close proximity to the coffee plants in order to give predators an alternative food source. The surrounding birds will also eat the pests off the plants, preventing disease. Pollinators include bees, bats, wasps, birds, and the wind therefore it’s in the coffee farms best interest to plant trees around the coffee and attract these pollinators. Without these protections the coffee plants are more susceptible to diseases such as la broca, ojo de gallo, rolla, and fungal infections.

We also learned a lot about how the coffee is made out of the coffee seeds. Odemar showed us around his coffee farm and explained each step of the coffee process as well as the agricultural difficulties he faces. The harvest season is from October to February but the peak month is December. They are harvested by hand on average 8 hours per day. The harvested is stored in the parchments stage during the off season because it will remain 

fresh in this stage for months. The ideal coffee seed is complete red before harvesting for better quality coffee. The coffee beans are weighed and then separated from the husk (outer shell). After that they are laid out in the sun to dry for 25 days and once dry and golden they are ready to roast! J If you want dark roast they leave it in there for 30 minutes and if you want medium roast you leave it in for only 25 minutes. The dark roast has less caffeine but a more bitter taste. If you would like honey roast they do not remove the husk and dry it in its ripe form; this process takes longer but results in a sweeter flavor. Once its ready the coffee is packaged in recycled paper and husk from the actual coffee seed.

At the end of the tour Odemar and his wife were really nice and invited us into their home to give us all fresh coffee. The coffee was amazing I usually don’t like coffee but it was really good. He could only speak Spanish but that did not take away from the experience at all. Overall, the tour was great and it was interesting to see the actual process of how organic coffee is made.

By Hannah Pike

Coffee is among the most valuable legally traded commodities from the developing world (FAO 2014). In the 2018/19 season, coffee consumption is forecast at a record 163.2 million bags (USDA 2018). As consumption patterns steadily increase, exports are expected to increase in response (USDA 2018). Here in Costa Rica, approximately 84,133 ha of the country’s land is covered in coffee plantations (USDA 2017). Traditional shade coffee growing practices involved growing coffee “under a diverse canopy of native forest trees” (Jha et al. 2014). Shade grown coffee is an agriculture production system which feeds into and benefits the ecosystem around it. Through this, coffee production doesn’t require full sun or the resulting deforestation to produce high yields. Rather, shade coffee benefits biodiversity levels in the surrounding areas (Perfecto et al. 1996).

However, coffee farm area has declined as high-yield, full sun agriculture systems take over the global coffee market (Jha et al. 2014). This shift has caused a decrease in coffee prices (Jha et al. 2014). As a college student and an avid coffee consumer, this shift initially seems to benefit me without cause for concern. Yet changing coffee consumption patterns and prices can have serious effects on small scale producers. Small scale farmers receive a very small fraction of the profits from the coffee value chain (Gresser and Tickell 2002). Worse still, coffee laborers and pickers (often migratory) are the most vulnerable to shifting coffee values, and continue to be the most marginalized participants in this system (Gresser and Tickell 2002). Laborers tend to be paid per pound of coffee cherries harvested, regardless of changes in coffee prices on the consumption end. Here in San Luis, the certified local organic shade coffee producer, Odemar, pays two dollars per square foot of coffee cherries picked. As we drank dark roast coffee in his kitchen, he told us of their efforts to become certified as shade grown and efforts to restore the forest around them. They are now able to sell their coffee as organic and shade grown certified, and are proud that the coffee they produce is grown “in harmony with its surrounding natural environment.”

Not all farms work in this way. Certification services to verify organic or shade coffee production may raise export prices to the benefit of the farmer (Bacon et al. 2008), but often times these returns do not cover the cost of certification and maintenance (Calo and Wise 2005). In this way and in every other way, agriculture systems tend to be set up to benefit large scale, monoculture productions, often in full sun that degradation the surrounding area in marginalize farmer workers.
So, what can we do about this?

1. Read coffee labels. Purchase Fair Trade, Shade Grown, or Bird Friendly coffee. Try to purchase directly from farmers or roasters if at all possible. Purchase from our neighbor, if it befits you. http://bellaticacafe.com/.
2. If you feel you cannot afford to buy high quantities of certified coffee, make your coffee stretch. Brew your coffee in the fridge over night, allowing it to be stronger so you don’t need to drink it as frequently.
3. Most importantly: do not become despondent or callous to the inevitable wear of capitalism. Know your power. As a student, as a critic, and as a coffee consumer. Ask questions about the systems you participate in, and know you can choose to be a part of them.

Bacon CM, Méndez VE, Gliessman SR, Goodman D, Fox JA, eds. 2008. Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America. MIT Press.
Calo M, Wise TA. 2005. Revaluing Peasant Coffee Production: Organic and Fair Trade Markets in Mexico. Global Development and Environment Institute.
[FAO] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2014. FAOSTAT. FAO. (5 March 2014; http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/ DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor)
Gresser, C. Tickell, S. 2002. (2013). Mugged: Poverty in Your Coffee Cup. Oxfam.

Jha, S., Bacon Christopher, M., Philpott Stacy, M., Méndez V., E., Läderach, P., & Rice Robert, A. (2014). Shade Coffee: Update on a Disappearing Refuge for Biodiversity. Bioscience, (5), 416.

Perfecto, I., Rice, R., Greenberg, R., & van der Voort, M. (1996). Shade Coffee: A Disappearing Refuge for Biodiversity. Bioscience, (8), 598. doi:10.2307/1312989

[USDA] USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. 2017. Global Agriculture Information Network. https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Coffee%20Annual_San%20Jose_Costa%20Rica_5-22-2017.pdf

A late start for the first post of 2018–I have no excuse. We arrived with 19 students (from 5 different schools or departments), 3 faculty, lots of luggage, and excitement all around. We started our first day with a naturalist hike on

the trails around campus and orientation. I am impressed yet again with how great all the students get along and how much they are taking advantage of the campus- especially enjoying free time playing volleyball, basketball, and soccer. We hit the ground running with courses and travel and the students blog posts have been coming in and I will now try to stay on top of publishing them all. So far we have had a coffee tour, hiked into and out of San Gerardo Station (Children’s Eternal Rainforest), had a campus sustainability and farm tour, and now we are enjoying La Selva.

Amanda

Among the other places that we have traveled throughout our time abroad, La Ensenada did not disappoint. The educational experience was just as enticing as the breathtaking views that surrounded us. When we first arrived, we stopped at a boat yard on the way to the farm where we would be staying. There we met the leaders of a co-operation made up of 45 individuals, 39 of them being women. The co-operation cleans and reforests mangrove areas that have been wiped out by human and natural influences. To this day they have planted close to 10,000 mangrove trees on the coast of La Ensenada. Healthy mangroves bring more than just a healthy ecosystem – they bring good mollusk harvests. The women in the co-operation had trained for eight months to get an official extraction license to work with other government organizations in collecting mollusks. This co-operation is the only organization that is currently legally allowed to harvest mollusks in Costa Rica.

The women guided us to four different stations of their co-operation: the mangrove forests, the shrimp farm, the tree nursery, and the cafeteria that had been recently built to bring in more funding. We were able to get hands-on and contribute to their cause. The women first brought us to their tree nursery, where they had a collection of small mangroves in plastic bags filled with mud and sand. Mangrove seeds are collected and typically spend three months in the tree nursery before being planted in a mangrove forest. We each grabbed a handful of bags, hopped on a boat, and made our way to the mangroves. With a shovel and our bare hands, we planted around 40 baby mangroves in their natural habitat.

Our next stop was the shrimp farm, where the women explained its detrimental effect on the environment and surrounding mangroves. Every three months, shrimp farms bring in larvae that they then harvest after an additional three months. Once harvested, the ponds are murdered by the addition of chlorine and calcium carbonate. These ponds are filled by the tides, so the inserted chemicals make their way into the ocean and mangrove areas. Mangroves are also threatened by shrimp farms when they are cut down for the dirt below them that is used for pond repair.

Our last stop brought us back to the cafeteria, where the women gave us a little history and some crazy good empanadas!

While we had a ton of free time to explore the diverse trails and scenery of La Ensenada, we partook in a second activity – a tractor ride! The tractor took us around the farm in what seemed like a safari style tour. The farm consisted of 400 hectares with about 212 cattle heads, 125 mango trees, and 300 hectares of pasture. The farm produces about 10000 bales of hay at the end of the rainy season, and 7000 bails at the end of the dry season. Along our tractor tour we saw a diversity of species and got some awesome photos! Halfway through the ride, we got off of the tractor to explore a salt farm. The farm’s peak salt production occurs during the dry season. The furthest end of the salt farm is where an oceanic canal brings in salt water to shallow man-made ponds. It takes about one month for water to move through each pond, becoming 10% more concentrated in salt with each move. The last pond is approximately 80% concentrated and is pumped into plastic beds where the water evaporates in about eight days. 100-pound bags of salt are then collected and used to feed the cows, for shipping fish, being sold to tilapia farms, and of course as iodized table salt.

In our free time to explore the farm, we came across everything from colorful crabs to jumping sting rays to vertebrate carcasses! La Ensenada was one for the books – the cherry on top was the never less than stupendous home-cooked meals throughout our stay at the farm.

After being on campus for while after tropical storm Nate, we were finally able to go on another trip. This time we went down to the Pacific Coast and visited the mangrove forests. Mangroves are the only forests that are capable of surviving so close to the ocean, and they host an abundance of aquatic organisms. What makes mangroves so cool is their various adaptations that allow them to colonize the extremely salty and wet conditions of the seaside.

Mangroves are also called halophytes which is another name for salt adapted trees and shrubs. In order to survive, they have to be able to filter salt and cope with immersion and wave action.

Red mangroves are able to prop themselves up on their roots like stilts. This helps them stay above the water level which enables the mangroves to absorb gases even during high tide. Other mangroves also make pneumatophores. These are little “breathing tubes” that stick out of the water during high tide. Many of the mangroves we saw in La Ensanada had these. They are covered in lenticels which allow for gas exchange. Mangroves also use their roots to prevent themselves from absorbing too much salt. Because their roots are so impenetrable they actually filter over 90% of the salt from the water that’s absorbed.
The trees have really amazing dispersal systems. The seeds look an awful lot like skinny zucchinis. They germinate while still attached to the mother plant, so they have started growing even

before they have been planted. They then float in the ocean until they find a suitable spot to root. The seeds normally float horizontally in the water which seems like it would make it difficult to stick in the ground and root. Mangroves have adapted to this. When a seed finds a suitable habitat, it will absorb water to change its density. It then floats vertically in the water which enables them to stick into the ground and resume growing. They can even reverse this process if the area turns out to be a poor environment.
Given all of their adaptation, mangrove forests are still threatened. People are constantly cutting them down to make beach resorts. This not only destroys the mangroves, but also ruins the habitat that supports many burrowing mollusks. Given the threat of climate

change, and how much carbon is stored in the soil of mangrove forests, we should be actively trying to inform the public, so they are more likely to be protected.

 

 

 

We arrived at the Veragua research center on the tenth of September. Initial impressions were that of a ghost town. Due to it being the low season we were the only people in the park, the employees were very enthused to see us and greeted us as if we were the first people they had seen in years. Although there was a lack of people at the park, there was certainly no lack of biodiversity. Our first day we saw countless golden orb weaver spiders, whose size left few knees unshaken. This spider is of particular importance because of the tensile strength of its silk web, which is stronger than steel. Another organism of impressive size but with eight less legs was seen at the herpetarium. The snake collection included 2 massive boa constrictors, eyelash pit vipers, a fer-de-lance, and many more.

One of the more impressive parts of Veragua was the research being done there. The head researcher, Jose Salazar, was in charge of multiple fascinating studies that focused on improving population numbers of multiple species of frogs and lizards. Using constructed conservation ponds Jose was hoping to create more habitat for frogs where he could easily monitor their population growth. Of particular interest was the Tiger frog, a critically endangered frog, whose numbers have been steadily increasing. Part of the group actually got a close look at one of these frogs after it escaped from its enclosure in the frog exhibit. Personally, my favorite project wasn’t the amphibians, but rather the Galliwasp Skink project. The Galliwasp Skink is a threatened species of lizard in Costa Rica and Jose in Veragua was the first person in the world to successfully bred this species in captivity.

One of the less educational activities, but no less thrilling, was the zip line tour where we flew through the canopy at speeds upwards of 50 mph (not really). Veragaua does boast a mighty zip line course with 11 lines, some of which easily float 50 feet off the jungle floor. This brought an entirely new perspective to the jungle that was only rivaled by the ride in the sky tram.

The stay in Veragua was short but that time was packed to the brim with activities. Between the research presentations, tram rides, night hikes, and even zip lining there was not a moment that could be described as dull.

 

Most people have seen an orchid before but there’s so much more to them than meets the eye. There are more species in the orchid family than in any other plant family. There are around 30,000 species in the world and about 1,000 species in Costa Rica. One of these species is V. planifolia, or as we know it, vanilla. Orchids are certainly a very diverse group: their size can range from three millimeters to three meters! Some orchids are terrestrial and grow from the ground but a majority of them (around 85%) are epiphytic. This means that they grow on other trees for better access to sunlight. We saw a few of these epiphytic orchids in San Gerardo. We saw orchids in the branches of trees on the trails and on the “orchid tree” which is a stump that they grow fallen orchids on.

Seeing the orchids in person really helped us understand their structure. They sometimes have a pseudobulb at the base of the stalk that can retain moisture and nutrients. This is really helpful for when an orchid is growing high up in a tree and has no way to reach the soil. The roots are unique because they are fleshy, green, and can photosynthesize. Orchid seeds are super small, like dust, and there can be millions of them in one flower! The seeds are dispersed by wind to find a suitable habitat with the right amount of moisture and certain kinds of fungus. Most of the seeds never find a viable habitat.

Orchid pollination is also very unique. Some species are self-pollinated and others are insect pollinated. Neotropical orchids are often pollinated by male orchid bees. The bees are a brilliant metallic green or blue. Unlike other pollinators that use a flower for its pollen or nectar, orchid bees scrape the petals for oil which may be used for attracting a mate. Some other species of orchids attract pollinators by mimicking a female insect with its color, shape, and odor!

Orchids are much more diverse and peculiar than I could have guessed. It was very interesting to see multiple different types, colors, and sizes of orchids on our trip.

Now that we’ve reached roughly the two-thirds mark of our time in Costa Rica, I think it’s a good time to reflect back on the huge diversity of bird species we’ve seen during our time here. During the first half of the semester, Dr. Schmidt led birding walks most mornings. During these walks, the morning’s bird list was tracked through eBird, a phone app developed by Cornell as a way to gather distribution data from recreational birders (for more information, visit http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/).

Combining these bird walk lists with incidental observations students made throughout the day, our group has seen a total of 143 species spread across 39 families  (as well as one bird, the dusky-faced tanager, whose family is currently under debate). While 13 of these families are represented only be a single species, the majority have at least three to four species to their name. The most populous groups include: Trochilidae, or hummingbirds with 12 species spotted so far; Thraupidae, or tanagers with 15 species; and Tyrannidae, or flycatchers, with the group having spotted a whopping 20 species so far!

 

In addition to observation through binoculars, some of us were able to get up close and personal with birds caught during mist net surveys performed by local researchers. We got to watch the researchers remove the birds from the net, take morphometric data, and even attach radio transmitter tags to larger birds. Overall the trip’s been chocked full with great bird observations and experiences. While we have already seen a huge diversity of birds, Costa Rica’s total 918 species means there’s always more to find!

Grant Foster