Sustainable Development ProjectsUniversity of Georgia, San Luis, Costa Rica

Christy Li and Jocelin Gregorio

Canopy Closure Measurement

Abstract: This internship focused on both the

engineering and research aspects of Sustainable

Development, Including: Biodigester experiment

and installation, canopy closure measurement,

butterfly conservation, bird window strike

project, and canopy closure measurement.

Bird Window Collision Project

Butterfly Conservation

Biodigester

Assisted in conducting biodigester experiment by measuring methane productions. Installed biodigester in a local farm.

A Bio- Methane Potential (BMP) test is

conducted to measure the efficiency of

methane production concerning different

organic solid mixtures. The goal of this

experiment is to determine if the addition of a

local bacterium to the mixture would increase

the methane production in anaerobic

digestion. Three sets of mixtures are set-up

for this experiment: the standard (organic

solid mix without the bacterium) group, the

control group, and the experimental group.

This is an ongoing research that still needs

more result on the biogas production and

methane concentration. As to date, the

experimental group produces visibly more

biogas than the standard group and the

control.

Acknowledgement: International Iacocca Internship Program, EI-STEPS, EES all providing funding. Thank you Bethany Loya, Phillip Dixon, Martha Garro Cruz, Jose Montero, Don Morris, and University of Georgia, Costa Rica for providing the opportunities, support, and assistance for the internship.

The Three-wattled Bell Bird Corridor is an initiative in the Monteverde region with a mission to protect migratory birds as they fly from the Gulf of Nicoya up into the mountain forests along the continental divide. Our primary focus in this project was to Collected data on the bird behaviors near windows and bird strikes

One of the goals of butterfly conservation in UGA is to increase the pool of genetic materials for butterfly species. Therefore, various species of butterflies were collected and mounted on campus to preserve the butterfly DNA. Specifically, the Greta oto (glass winged butterfly) was collected because it is a residential butterfly species. This genetic information is stored such that it can be used for scientific purposes in the future.

In our project, we measured the canopy closure along UGA’s campus trials and the permanent reforested plot using densiometers.

Canopy Closure is an important measure to evaluate the ecological succession of a forest. It assesses the sky hemisphere covered by vegetation using a single reference point. The measurement is influenced by the tree height, canopy widths, and the amount of lights and other factors affecting the understory habitat (Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project).It has a far range of uses from measuring forest succession to determining forest carbon sequester potential.

Table 1: Most of the canopy closure percentages are between 70 to 95 percent with a few exceptions of open forest canopy with the trials or near the entrance of the trials.