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 Marine
Research Station at Punta Morales
- Site Location:
Eastern shore of the inner Gulf of Nicoya, on the Pacific coast.
- Principal
Biome/Main Communities: Mangrove forests, estuaries, tidal
flats.
- Research
Topics: Zooplankton and Phytoplankton monitoring. Macrobenthos
structure in intertidal mudflats. Fisheries community analysis.
- History
of Site/Type of data collected: The station was opened in
1982. Originally built and administered by the National Council
on Science and Technology, this station was later handled over
the National University. It has being one of the main research
sites for marine and estuarine studies, both for national and
international researchers. Beside biological inventories and data
on population and community dyamics the site has long term data
on tidal activity.
Biological
Reserve Alberto Ml. Brenes at San Ramón
- Site Location:
Located 50 Km NE of San Ramón city on the Continental Divide
- Principal
Biome/Main Communities: Premontane wet forest, montane forest.
- Research
Topics: Soil ecology, altitudinal distribution of plant species,
plant taxonomy and population ecology of plants
- History
of Site/Type of data collected: This reserve was created in
1975 and since then has been administered by the University of
Costa Rica. As one of the few protected areas within the premontane
belt, the site has atracted researchers mainly from Costa Rica,
Germany and the US.A.. The site has recived considerable support
from the Volkswagen Foundation in Germany. Almost 100 research
projects have been conducted at this station. Long term data from
permanent plots, metereologial data, species inventories and phenological
data are available from this site.
Cloud
Forest Reserve Monteverde
- Established
in 1972, the Monteverde Preserve covers over 10,500 hectares,
more than 90% of which is virgin forest. It contains an extremely
high biological diversity, including over 2,500 plant species
(among them 420 different kinds of orchids), 100 species of mammals,
400 bird species, 120 reptilian and amphibian species, and thousands
of insects.
- Site Location:
The Reserve is located in the Tilarán Range on the continental
divide, about 40Km west from the InterAmerican Highway.
- Principal
Biome/Main Communities: With a mean temperature range between
22-16ºC and mean annual precipitation ranging from 2600-7000 mm,
the Reserve has a wide variety of environments. Wet Premontane
Forest, Wet Montane Forest, Rainy Premontane forest are the main
Life Zones. Within them, dwarf forest, forested swamps, rain forest
are abundant. Endemism is high in the area, with a high diversity
of epiphytes.
- Research
Topics: Nutrient Cycling in epiphytes, amphibian declining,
avian ecology, butterflies migration. global change impact on
forest dynamics, forest regeneration. Precipitation data.
- History
of Site/Type of data collected: The reserve was established
in 1972 by the Tropical Science Center as a reaction to the fast
deforestation process in the region. A gradual expansion of the
Reserve area has been achieved with the support of a wide range
of institutions and ndividuals. This is a very well studied area
, that has attracted a large number of researcher over the last
30 years.
La Selva Biological
Station
- Site
Location:
La Selva, situated at the confluence of two major rivers in the
Caribbean lowlands of northern Costa Rica, comprises 1,600 hectares
(3,900 acres) of tropical wet forests and disturbed lands. It
averages 4 m (over 13 feet!) of rainfall that is spread rather
evenly throughout the year. The station is bordered on the south
by Braulio Carrillo National Park, which contains more than 46,000
hectares of forest land and is the core conservation unit of the
91,000-hectare Cordillera Volcánica Central Biosphere Reserve.
- Principal
Biome/Main Communities: Located within the troical wet forest
and the tropical premontane wet forest, the Station has about
73% of its area under primary tropical rain forest.
- Research
Topics: Forest dynamics. Long term permanent plots, carbon
budgets and fluxes in the forest, nutrient dynamics, native species
trials, stream ecology, agroecological research, avian ecology.
- History
of Site/Type of data collected: La Selva was originally established
in 1954 by Dr. Leslie Holdridge, as a farm dedicated to the experimentation
on mixed plantations for the improvement of the natural resources
management. It was purchased in 1968 by the Organization for Tropical
Studies and declared a private biological reserve and station.
Since then it has become one of the most important sites in the
world for research on tropical rain forest. Over 240 scientific
papers are published yearly out of the research conducted at the
site.
Las
Cruces Biological Station
- Site
Location:
Las Cruces is located near the Panamanian border on Costa Rica's
southern Pacific coastal range, about six Km south of San Vito
de Java.. The grounds surrounding the buildings have 8 hectares
of cultivated collections and 4 hectares of fallow and experimental
plots.
- Principal
Biome/Main Communities: This station is home to the Wilson
Botanical Garden featuring beautifully diverse plantings of tropical
and subtropical ornamentals, representatives of unusual plant
families and rare and endangered plants from Costa Rica and elsewhere.
Particularly well represented are ferns, aroids, bromeliads, gingers,
heliconias, marantas, and palms. More than 1,000 genera in 212
plants families can be seen along trails that wind around palm-covered
hillsides, through agave and lily beds, under rain forest canopy,
through banana and heliconia groves, or to strategic overlooks
on the rolling grounds. Around 240 has of premontane/montane forests
adyacent to the garden are part of this station.
- Research
Topics: Horticultural Research, Forest fragmentation analysis,
Forest Regeneration, butterfly ecology.
- History
of Site/Type of data collected: The Las Cruces Station started
originally as the Las Cruces Tropical Botanical Garde. In 1962
Robert and Catherine Wilson purchased an abandoned pastureland
and through years of dedicated effort transformed it into an impressive
garde. The Wilson added adjacent forested properties and chose
to treat them as a biological reserve. In 1973 the Garden became
property of the Organization for Tropical Studies, who later bought
adjacent forested properties to take the station to its present
condition. The area has GIS coverages, metereological data, phenoligal
data and horticultural/botanical databases.
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