Some of my favorite photos I took during the early years of my PhD field research activities in the Neotropics from 2009 - 2012 setting up Earth observation satellite validation and calibration study sites in endangered tropical ecosystems. by Cassidy Rankine Earth Observation Systems Laboratory University of Alberta

1. January 2013
Earth Observation Systems Laboratory
Earth and Atmospheric Science Department
Neotropical Forest Monitoring Project
Sights and stories by Cassidy Rankine, PhD Student.

2. The forgotten tropical forests. When most people hear about tropical forests
they picture the well known rainforests and almost never consider their
endangered dry counterpart which endure months of drought each year yet are
home to a vast diversity of plants and animals, many of which are still unknown
to science. Tropical dry forests once covered half of the world’s tropics but are
now the most threatened tropical ecosystem as a result of intense human
settlement and extensive land cover conversion for agricultural. With less than
1% of these forests protected in the Americas, the deforestation rates are often
greater than those of tropical rainforests.
Conservation in Latin American and the Tropi-Dry Project. A project
spearheaded by the University of Alberta’s director of the Center for Earth
Observation Sciences, Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa has assembled a team to study
how semi-arid deforested land is naturally regenerating across Latin America
since 2001 using advanced space-borne and in-situ remote sensing techniques.

3. My Phd work in a nutshell. I have been
travelling in central and south America as
part of the Tropi-Dry project since 2009
spending months at a time in tropical dry
forests collecting data for my thesis. This
monitoring initiative uses advanced in-situ
sensor networks for micrometeorology and
forest phenology, tracking changes in
climate and forest productivity to better
assess disturbance resilience and forest
regeneration to promote current and future
sustainability of these poorly studied
ecosystems. In addition, my work aims to
validate earth observation satellite data so
that seasonally dry ecosystems can be
better used to detect the impacts of climate
change in tropical environments.

4. Field sites across the research network. The
Tropi-Dry research network is comprised of
protected areas of Tropical Dry Forest for
conservation research across Mexico, Costa
Rica, Panama, Brazil, and Argentina to obtain
insights over a latitudinal gradient of these
endangered ecosystems throughout the
Neotropics. Over the last 10 years each study
site has played host to intensive ecological,
social and remote sensing research to bring
about a state of the art understanding of
these environments. I have been managing
the ground based remote sensing teams
across most of these sites since 2009.

5. The great annual transformation. From barren branches to voracious
vegetation, our instruments have measured the transition from dry
season dormancy to growing season greenness takes place in under 10
days from the first leaf buds to a fully mature tropical canopy. With this
sudden change comes drastic explosions in animal life and the renewed
livelihoods of local communities.

6. Driving into the Tropical Dry Forest conservation park MG, Brazil. After
one of the world’s largest irrigation projects was created in this drought
stricken region of south east Brazil, several protected areas were created
as compensation. Here we are entering the park at the beginning of April,
the last month of the rainy season when roads are forgiving. It will not rain
here for another 6 months.

7. Building an understory microclimate monitoring station. July in south
eastern Brazil is the middle of the winter dry season and the once lush
forest (left) becomes golden and crispy as it bakes for months in the
relentless tropical sun. Nearly all the trees are completely deciduous
leaving little to no shade for refuge as the canopy disappears. Here I am
with my field assistant (Marco Tulio S. Vieira) dressed head to toe to ward
off biting flies and bees that seek our sweat in the 30-40°C dry sauna.

8. Tropical insects, the most extraordinary
nuisance. As evident by the photos, insects
are often the most difficult part of job
when working in a tropical forest. In these
semi-arid forests any source of moisture is
sought out, often at my dismay. Tiny salt
bees will fly into your eyes, ears, mouth and
nose and can make it near impossible to
accomplish anything in good time.

9. A bird’s eye view of the canopy. My shadow falls far below as I sit 20m atop
one of the many phenology towers we have built to observe the seasonal
changes in forest canopy conditions. Using optical sensor that stay up here
year-round we obtain valuable light reflectance data from which we can tell
greenness and therefore photosynthetic potential of the forest. Not a job for
the faint of heart but the view cannot be beat (below).

10. A giant’s belly, adapted to drought. The most
recognizable trees in the landscape of Minas
Gerais state, Brazil, are affectionately called
barriguda meaning ‘potbellied’ (Malvaceae
family). These bottle shaped behemoths have
hollow trunks capable of storing water for the
dry season. Knocking on one produces an
entertaining drum-like resonance.
Below I indulge in some locally grown
tangerines beside the barriguda I call Big B
with my field assistants from the University of
Montes Claros whom we share close research
collaborations with.

11. Light in the forest understory. Tropical dry
forests can often be distinguished from
tropical moist forests by the density of
vegetation in the understory. Dry forest
canopies are typically more open allowing
light through for understory plants to
thrive. Unfortunately for my work this
makes running around in the forest
collecting data extremely difficult as most
underbrush species are equipped with
spines which do their best to prevent me
from going anywhere fast.

12. BBQs and deforestation. You might not think that a weekend cookout could cause so
much trouble but indeed the market for this inefficient, cheap fuel in many tropical
regions drives the development of illegal charcoal camps like the one pictured here. Large
tracts of forest are cut and burnt in these camps often found in rural areas where forest
protection enforcement is minimal. We drove by this one on the way to one of our most
remote monitoring stations in a protected watershed called Pandeiros, Brazil.

13. Electronics and tropical forests do not mix.
After a day in the forest checking on the
equipment, downloading data, and
installing new sensors my evenings are
often spent attempting to repair electronics
that mother nature has chewed up and spit
out. Water-tight ratings do not often mean
much when insects eat anything made of
rubber or plastic and monkeys like to
inquire with their teeth. It tends to be an
uphill battle trying to obtain a full year’s
data set as with each season we discover a
new way to break a data logger.

14. Looking out over Rupestrian Fields in the Brazilian Highlands. These ancient landscapes in the Serra
do Espinhaço Mountain Range have escaped glaciation for millennia. As a result, many unique plant
taxa are found here isolated from the rest of the world. Our research employs remote sensing of
ecophysiology to determine how these ecosystems at higher elevations are responding to climate
change and coping with invasive species due to road developments.

15. Clever camouflage. This little tree frog I
found (right) while building a new
monitoring tower in abandoned pasture
has coloration that very closely resembles
the lichen species on the tree branches.
Amazingly, as I approached him he crept
forward placing his head exactly in line with
an existing patch of lichen completing the
shape and blending in almost perfectly. The
smirk on his face makes me think this was
no accident, but rather an all too
impressive disappearing act.

16. Perched in the Panama Canal. Harnessed to a thin tower 45m above a 100 year old tropical rainforest reserve
I place a quantum sensor poised to measure incoming photosynthetic radiation above a canopy riddled with
Howler Monkeys. The primates were none pleased with my ascent into the canopy but I was glad it was only
their songs of horrible discontent that followed me up the carbon flux tower. Barro Colorado Island, operated
by the U.S. Federal Smithsonian Institute, is situated in the man-made Lake Gatun in the Panama Canal and is
one of the world’s most well renowned Tropical Research sites.

17. Debris and Decomposers. Unlike the deep
fertile soils of temperate forests, most of
the biomass in a tropical ecosystem is
above ground. High temperatures and the
diversity of invertebrates means that
anything that falls to the forest floor is
quickly degraded and recycled in the
ecosystem. Our scientific instruments are
not exempt from this rule and I often find
my equipment left for one year looks as
though it has been abandoned for decades.

18. Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Green as far as the eye can see is a familiar sight in the panama canal,
even at the waters edge the tropical vegetation demands a presence. This is the view from the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute field station in Panama. Its very peaceful until the howler monkeys have their
say, and when they do there is nowhere on the island you can escape their haunting calls.

19. “Honey I shrunk the biologists”. Here in Panama things are larger than life. I spent my 25th birthday last January
hiking amongst some of the largest tropical trees in the world placing networks of mini sensors to monitor
canopy growth and productivity dynamics. Although I seem small next to this 50m tall monster, this is the
second largest resident on the island, second only to the one the locals have creatively dubbed “the big tree”.

20. Lasers in the jungle. I came to panama on an initiative to estimate understory
light conditions using high intensity dual scanning lasers which were flown over
the forest canopy aboard an airplane. My work was to install ground based
sensors to validate the laser data across a 50Ha study plot. Once everything was
in place I had hiked over 60km in steamy terrain like that seen here.

21. Sunset on the Panama Canal. Still one of the most impressive engineering feats of the
modern world, the completion of the 77km Panama Canal in 1914 positioned the United
States as a global economic power for the first time in history. Currently the canal is being
doubled in size, once again threatening tropical biodiversity. We must stop and wonder
what is really being traded here.

22. Night time in Panama. The hyper-diverse tropical rainforests
forests in the isthmus of Panama are unlike any other place
in the world. You will see things at night you might imagine
from another world. This tree frog sits calmly as I snapped
his photo, my last night on Barro Colorado Island.

23. Anolis En garde, Mexico. After setting up a
microclimate sensor network in our study
plot in the Chamela Biosphere Reserve
(below) I stopped to watch a pair of male
anolis lizards fight over a perching place,
perhaps an ideal spot to pick up a pretty
lady lizard. Things went on for several
minutes and got quite heated when finally
one of the males bit the other one hard
enough for him to jump to the ground. The
victor reared his head and proudly
displayed his dewlap for all to see, revelling
in his triumph (left).

24. The wonders of late
night jungle hikes.
After the sun sets, the
forest really comes
alive. A headlamp is
useful to light your
way, but be warned,
your headgear may be
much more attractive
than you might think.
This giant silk moth
found me all to easily
in the dark.

25. Where form doesn’t always meet function.
To the left is a photo I took of a frog while
on a night hike in the Chamela forest
reserve, aptly known as the spade-faced
frog, no one is sure why their snout is
shaped this way. I like to think it actually
uses its shovel nose to dig in the dirt for its
meals.
Below, a giant land snail glides along the
forest understory. These molluscs are only
found in the old growth dry forests and can
grow to have shells the size of a baseball.

26. Entomologists Paradise. My bachelors
degree was in animal biology at the U of A
and after having spent weeks on end in
some of the research parks in Mesoamerica
I can easily say the most impressive group
of animals in the tropical dry forests are the
insects. No matter how many times I return
to these places I still come across new
critters that I could not have, in my wildest
dreams, imagined to exist. From mystic
morphologies to bat-crazy behaviours, the
bugs never ceased to impress and amaze
me.

27. Cacti on calcareous outcrops.
Where bedrock meets the air
no trees can root and these
unique islands of succulents
and stone emerge in the
midst of a dense forest,
Minas Gerais, Brazil.

28. A sweet symbiosis. In highly competitive
environments plants and animals adapt
very interesting collaborations. On the right
we see several ants on a tree trunk sipping
dew produced by the pink scale insect. The
scale insect is immobile as it grows into the
tree to tap the sugary juices, as a reward for
guarding it from predators, the sap insect
provides food for the soldier ants. Having
learned of such relationships in ecology
class you can only imagine my delight when
I discovered that I could actually apply my
knowledge of weird and wonderful things.

29. More than Jedi mind tricks. This unfortunate specimen I photographed had fallen victim to one of the most
interesting yet bewildering acts of nature. This ant became infected by a fungus capable of taking over its
mind. The parasite forces the ant to climb upwards to a vantage point where it then clings to a branch and
perishes. After which the fungus produced its fruiting body protruding from the neck of the ant to spread the
fungal spores. How this intricate reproductive technique is achieved, no one yet understands.

30. Rainbows and rain gauges. Pictured on the
right is a weather monitoring station
installed in 2007 in the Mata Seca State
Park, Brazil. This station serves as a control
for our understory microclimate monitoring
networks throughout the adjacent forest.
Several times now I had had to suit up in
my mesh outfit and clean out the wasps
which love to nest in our rain gauges.
Sometimes I feel mother nature tries her
best not to reveal all her secrets.

31. Eucalyptus dry forest flux tower view, Victoria State, Australia. In June of
2012 our team went to install the first environmental wireless sensor
network in Australia (sensor node on right). Here is the view south from a
35m tall carbon flux monitoring tower. Australia is known for their annual
bush fires fuelled by the intense droughts and the flammable, often
explosive, saps secreted by the eucalyptus trees.

32. Tropi-Dry techniques finally arrive in Alberta. The Alberta Government approves a new carbon and ecosystem
exchange monitoring site in Alberta, just north of Peace River. We installed the latest technology in wireless sensor
networks in the fall of 2012 streaming the environmental real-time data back to our labs at the University of Alberta.

33. Sunset in the Dry Forest. High atmospheric aerosol loads are not uncommon in the seasonally dry tropics, often a
result of anthropogenic burning and agricultural activities that stir up dust, a substance I know all too well after
working in these environments. Consequently, I find myself staring at stunning sunsets most nights in the dry forest,
as if our presence here signals both beauty and beguile. One thing is for certain though, I have been enchanted by
these forests, not just by the amazing things I have learned, but more so by what I know is waiting to be discovered.