Facility
Coibita Island
In one of the wildest places
in Central America
In one of the wildest places
in Central America
As Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Panama City, Panama, I retired in June, 2020 from the job of managing more than 400 employees, an annual budget of $35 million, and the institute’s research facilities ...
I am interested in the evolution and the ecology of marine organisms, particularly sea urchins, but also fishes, crustaceans, and corals. I focus on the processes that give rise to new species, and I use molecular tools to reconstruct the history of populations and of genes. Typically, this...
My research focuses on how land-cover and climate change affect water movement through soils, weathering, and erosion, and how these, in turn, affect the composition and dispersal of dissolved and solid phases in rivers and trace gases in the atmosphere. Some of my areas of expertise include...
As STRI director for 34 years, a lot of innovative things were enabled under my watch. One of the most important was the addition of the five peninsulas to the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, which created a buffer zone around Barro Colorado Island and added research areas that allow for...
A rocky intertidal zone and sandy beach
at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal.
A new model suggests reforestation could be detrimental to water resources in the Panama Canal. Smithsonian scientists warn of flawed methodology and emphasize case for long-term monitoring.
Thousands of years of hunting has turned a substantial meal into a bite-sized snack.
Large numbers of small algae-grazing sea urchins and fish may take the place of larger grazers to prevent algae from overgrowing reefs, a new study shows.