Day 3

Today was our first day in the field to gather data for our research. The project I am working on is Geospatial habitat and riparian vegetation mapping in freshwater streams along a land use gradient. My mentor is Alex Alexiades, from Heritage University. He has been very helpful in teaching my group and also making sure that we get the most out of this experience which is awesome. We hiked 7 miles today to reach 3 different sites where we went through 4 protocols to collect data that we will later put into a spreadsheet. Victoria from the Ngäbe-Buglé tribe of Panama came with us and she was so helpful and taught us a lot about the plant and animal life in the forest. She knew the names of plants, whether they are invasive or native, and how her tribe uses that plant as either medicine, food, or for tools and crafts. The hiking was beautiful we got to see a beautiful little waterfall that was off of the trail a littles ways. We almost lost our trail in one area but luckily we were able to find it and get back onto the main Rio Java trail. I am pretty tired from the work we did today so I am expecting to not have any trouble getting a full nights rest and getting back on the trail in the morning to hit more sites.