Shiels, A.B. Leaf litter decomposition and substrate chemistry of early successional
species on landslides in Puerto Rico. Biotropica, in press.
The Journey to El Yunque project recently completed a workshop with 8 middle
school teachers from VA, WA, and MT. The workshop took place in Williamsburg,
VA. These teachers will be participating in a year long evaluation of the program
to determine the extent to which students learn better than using textbooks.
In Puerto Rico, the Journey to El Yunque Web site was used by 550 teachers in training session on teaching English through science. The workshops were conducted by the Computer Learning Center in Rio Piedras.
Steven McGee has left Wheeling Jesuit University and moved the Journey to El Yunque project to a small business called The Learning Partnership. This move will make the project more viable for long term sustainability.
El Verde has a new cellular phone number: 787-360-2891. The 787-380-3220 still works.
Last year, 2004, was the second wettest year at El Verde Field Station since 1964, when rainfall was first recorded. The wettest year is 1998. Last year also had a record amount of rainfall for a single month during May, with over 1000 mm for the month.
For some figures with the meteorological summary go to: http://ites.upr.edu/EVFS/Rain2004.htm
A pdf file with the meteorological summary can be found at: http://ites.upr.edu/EVFS/MeteorSummary2004.pdf
March 2005 a record low for rainfall at El Verde:
Although not part of the above summary, rainfall during March 2005 was a record
low for El Verde. Only 9.4 mm of rainfall were measured during the entire month!
Barometric data is now collected at El Verde Field Station:
In collaboration with the Communications and Space Science Laboratory (Penn
State Univ) and the Arecibo Observatory, El Verde is collecting barometric data.
Real time plots can be found at http://allsky.ee.psu.edu/barograph/barographIndex.htm
Check our web site for more information about El Verde Field Station: http://ites.upr.edu/EVFS/
From the REU program in Tropical Ecology and Evolution at El Verde Field Station
The REU program has been running since May 31st and students are reaching the
end of their 10 week internships. Here is the list of research projects (Student
--- Project. Mentor):
Additional information at: http://ites.upr.edu/REU/
This morning I inspected the CTE plots in Blocks A and B. There is a lot of
sprouting, a lot of regeneration from seed, and all the traps, tags, litter
bags, recording gizmos, staked plots, and so on look great. Among the trimmed
trees in the four trimmed plots I saw only one that was not sprouting. Many
are sprouting vigorously. There is much pioneer tree regeneration (/Cecropia/
and /Alchornea/ especially) in both debris-free and debris-remaining trimmed
plots. There is much grass in a couple of the plots. The debris is rotting apace.
We created the conditions we wanted. Now to make sure that we follow up with
monitoring, analysis, and publication.
Nick, Bob,Whendee, Fred, and Bill meet this weekend to work on the LTER 4 proposal. We have a good framework, on the lines of what I described at the January meeting. We will fill it out shortly and send it to all for comments.
Xiaoming, Todd, John, Mitch Aide, Olga Mayol and several graduate students
from UPR are in China, meeting with scientists there to discuss land-use change
and environmental consequences in the tropics.
LUQ IM has completed the first planned phase of a Network-wide project to convert all metadata databases into Exological Metadata Language (EML), a metadata specification that can be used to comprehensively describe ecological data in terms of content, structure, and research context. This first phase comprehends all general information type of metadata such as project and data set descriptions, methods, investigators and contact list, and keywords related to the data base.
A second phase will add descriptions of the data files as well as the variables measured belonging to each data file of the data set.
EML will provide the necessary standard needed to access and query metadata to eventually access data online from different locations. The idea is to facilitate synthesis and cross site studies. The following site provides a description of EML: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/
A list of all our EML converted metadata is "harvested" periodically into a LNO server that allows users to query for this information online.
This is an achievement for LUQ since we were the fifth to comply with this standard, as agreed by all Information Mangers few years ago. EML will promote synthesis and cross site collaboration by providing a common format to publish metadata.
NSF have awarded the Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot a grant for a collaborative
proposal between UPR (Jill Thompson and Nick Brokaw) and the Institute for Ecosystem
Studies (Maria Uriarte and Charlie Canham). The proposal - Collaborative research:
Natural disturbance and human land-use as determinants of tree community dynamics
in an subtropical wet forest - will include a new census of the plot, further
data analysis using likelihood analysis and other methods, and a continuation
of the work to prepare a SORTIE model for the forest.
We hope that the census will begin before the end of 2005, and we will soon be advertising for technicians and volunteers to start in January 2006. Please use whatever influence you have to ensure that the LFDP does not suffer hurricane damage during 2005 and 2006!