To celebrate a century of scientific research in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, a series of volumes will provide a record of the major contributions to plant and ecosystem science, animal science, and the physical environment for future generations of researchers.
Understanding when and where trees die in vast tropical forests is a challenging first step toward understanding carbon dynamics and climate change. Researchers explained variations in tree mortality over a five-year period by analyzing drone images of one of the most-studied tropical forests in the world, Barro Colorado Island in Panama.
Helene Muller-Landau, staff scientist, was invited to write an authoritative review about carbon storage in forests. Her team combed through existing studies and came up with some novel conclusions of their own.
When he’s not racing his bike cross-country, Milton Garcia is in demand for his expertise flying drones. In the last month, he monitored mangrove deforestation on Panama’s Pacific coast, mapped a new research station in Coiba National Park and tracked blooming trees on Barro Colorado Island, the first plot in an international network of forest monitoring sites.
