My Experiences Studying and Researching Abroad: Water Quality Research

Hi everyone!

Happy weekend! I've been kind of MIA on here for a bit...it's been a busy few weeks and now I'm getting ready to leave for my visa trip (I'm on a tourist visa here in CR, which means that after 90 days in country I need to leave for at least 3 days). I'm traveling with James, another naturalist, and we're leaving campus tomorrow and Costa Rica on Sunday. I'm super excited to visit Medellin, Colombia for a few days to explore!

This week I got to help out with some of the water quality research happening here. Four times per year, water samples are collected from 18 different sites in the Bellbird Biological Corridor. The corridor is "a multi-institutional initiative which seeks to connect critical Pacific-slope habitat between the Monteverde Reserve Complex along the continental divide (~1800m) and coastal mangroves on the Gulf of Nicoya (sea level), thus enhancing important altitudinal migratory routes for several species of concern" (Monteverde Institute site). In other words: there's a really cool bird found here called the Three-wattled Bellbird that is an altitudinal migrant. The birds follow the fruiting of the wild avocado tree up and down the mountain. This means there are times of year when we hear a ton of them up here in Monteverde (they're really loud) and other times of year when they're mostly found in the lowlands closer to the coast. Much of the land on the Pacific side of the mountain range was deforested for agriculture, so the Biological Corridor is an effort to reforest the land between the mountains and the coast to try to give these birds (and other animals) back their habitat.

For the water quality research, there are 6 sites in the lowlands, 6 sites at middle elevation and 6 sites at higher elevation. These sites cover a range of highly human influenced water (i.e. a river right at the edge of a dairy farm or one in the middle of a pineapple plantation) to little human influence (as close to the source of the river that we could trek to). We collected information on pretty much everything: depth and width of the river, velocity of the water, pH, dissolved oxygen content, total suspended solids, e. Coli and fecal coliforms...everything (Some of this testing happens back in the lab on campus). It takes three days to travel to all of the sites, and I took part in the sampling for the first two days. One really cool thing about this research: it's been underway for the last three (ish) years, which means that there is pretty comprehensive data on the water quality of all of these sites from before and after Hurricane Nate. The storm unsurprisingly caused a lot of changes in the water, which the data lets us look at in more detail.

On our way!

Casual beauty during the drive

Like what?

We drove by one town that had been destroyed during the hurricane last year...the community center, the church, and the soccer field were all gone, along with many of the homes

Gotta get that picture

When with naturalists: you stop and pull over to get a closer look at a bird (in this case, a Crested Bobwhite quail)

Our third site (I didn't bring my phone down to the first two)

Hard at work! (two people holding the measuring tape, one person stopping every meter across the river to measure depth and velocity, one person to record)

The fourth site was in a pineapple plantation. Which was insane...you could only see pineapples in every direction. Worth noting: commercial pineapple production is actually terrible for the environment; something to learn more about if you're interested.

The site within the pineapple plantation

Fifth site

Sixth site

Snacks! We stopped and Martha picked up some mamon chinos for us 😊

Last site of the day...we weren't quite sure how we felt about the color of the water

El equipo! (The team)

Gorgeous views to start off day two

😃😃😃

Our first two sites of day two were along this river. One very close to human influence (we walked right by fresh cow patties on our way down to the water) and one much closer to the source.

The water and the rocks were SO PRETTY. Also please note how I'm wearing my shoes...I borrowed Chacos from a friend here and they did not like my feet.