Barro Colorado Island is located in the man-made Gatun Lake in the middle of the Panama Canal. The island was formed when the waters of the Chagres River were dammed to form the lake in 1913. When the waters rose, they covered a significant part of the existing tropical forest, but certain hilltops remained as islands in the middle of the lake. It has an area of 15.6 km2 (6.0 sq mi). [1]
The island was set aside as a nature reserve on April 17, 1923, by the U.S. Government. [2] Initially administered by the Panama Canal Company under the direction of James Zetek, [3] since 1946 Barro Colorado Island has been administered by the Smithsonian, together with five adjacent peninsulas, as the Barro Colorado Nature Monument. [2] This Monument has an area of 54 km2. [4] It is among the most-studied areas of tropical forest in the world. [5] The Nature Monument has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International. [6]
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) has a permanent research center on the island, dedicated to studying tropical forest ecosystems. [4] Because the Island's diverse ecosystem has been very little altered by humans, Barro Colorado has been studied for over eighty years within a great variety of biological disciplines. Only the larger fauna disappeared from Barro Colorado after the lake was flooded in 1914. Many scientific studies have been conducted to document the changes in the species composition of the island. Hundreds of scientists conduct research projects on Barro Colorado Island every year. [2]
In 1978, Thomas Croat published his Flora of Barro Colorado Island documenting the plant species on the island. [1] [2] In 1999, Egbert Giles Leigh, who first visited the island in 1966, and now spends half his week there, published Tropical Forest Ecology : A View from Barro Colorado Island. [7] [8] In 2002 The Tapir's Morning Bath by Elizabeth Royte was published, chronicling the lives and work of scientists working on the island. [5]
National Geographic produced a documentary featuring the Barro Colorado Island titled World's Last Great Places: Rain Forests released in 2007. The first selection, titled Panama Wild: Rain Forest of Life features scientists from the Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute and also highlights the battles for survival and partnerships among species within this rich ecosystem.
In 1980, a 50-ha forest dynamics plot was established on Barro Colorado Island by researchers from STRI and Princeton University. The first census was conducted in 1982 and recorded every free-standing tree and shrub in the plot of more than 1-cm dbh, totalling approximately 240,000 stems of 303 different species. It has been recensused every 5 years since 1985, allowing scientists to study the normal dynamics of the forest, as well as extreme events, such as El Niño. [9] Another 50 hectares (120 acres) plot was later established in the Pasoh forest reserve, Malaysia in 1987, allowing the dynamics of two distinct tropical forests to be compared. [10]
Visitors are allowed on Barro Colorado Island. Access is, however, regulated by STRI. To visit the island, people must make a reservation with the staff and arrange for a tour. Tours generally include transportation to and from the island (often by boat from Gamboa), a 2–3 hour guided hike, lunch, and a visit to the museum. Hikes through the island offer the opportunity to spot several animals including monkeys, anteaters, birds and insects. [11]
U.S. federal law states that the natural features of the island shall "be left in their natural state for scientific observation and investigation", "except in event of declared national emergency." [12]
U.S. federal law no longer applies, as the Panama Canal Zone was incorporated back into Panama in 1979.
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is located in Panama and is the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States. It is dedicated to understanding the past, present, and future of tropical ecosystems and their relevance to human welfare. STRI grew out of a small field station established in 1923 on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone to become one of the world's leading tropical research organizations. STRI's facilities provide for long-term ecological studies in the tropics and are used by some 1,200 visiting scientists from academic and research institutions around the world every year.
The Chagres River, in central Panama, is the largest river in the Panama Canal's watershed. The river is dammed twice, and the resulting reservoirs—Gatun Lake and Lake Alajuela—form an integral part of the canal and its water system. Although the river's natural course runs northwest to its mouth at the Caribbean Sea, its waters also flow, via the canal's locks, into the Gulf of Panama to the south. The Chagres thus has the unusual claim of drainage into two oceans.
Galeta Island is an island located on the Atlantic side of the Republic of Panama, just east of the city of Colón, Panama.
Stephen P. Hubbell is an American ecologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography (UNTB), which seeks to explain the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities not by niche differences but by stochastic processes among ecologically equivalent species. Hubbell is also a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. He is also well known for tropical forest studies. In 1980, he and Robin B. Foster of the Field Museum in Chicago, launched the first of the 50 hectare forest dynamics studies on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. This plot became the flagship of a global network of large permanent forest dynamics plots, all following identical measurement protocols. This global network now has more than 70 plots in 28 countries, and these plots contain more than 12000 tree species and 7 million individual trees that are tagged, mapped, and monitored long-term for growth, survival and recruitment. The Center for Tropical Forest Science coordinates research across global network of plots through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The program has expanded into the temperate zone, and is now known as the Forest Global Earth Observatory Network or ForestGEO.
The Causeway Islands are four small islands by the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal. They are linked to the mainland via a causeway, made from rock extracted during the excavations from the Panama Canal. In part the causeway was meant to serve as a breakwater for the entrance.
Martin Humphrey Moynihan was a behavioral evolutionary biologist and ornithologist who studied under Ernst Mayr and Niko Tinbergen, and was a contemporary of Desmond Morris. He was the founding director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.
The Center for Tropical Forest Science, or CTFS, was a consortium of forest researchers who pursued long-term research on tree populations using comparable census method. The work developed out of a study of 50 hectares of forest on Barro Colorado Island in Panama begun in 1981. All individual trees larger than 1 centimeter in stem diameter were measured, mapped, and identified, which included 300 different species. This census has been repeated every five years since. Parallel censuses of large forest plots were carried out in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Numerous scientific research reports on tree species diversity, distribution, life span, and growth rates have been published based on these plots. CTFS was directed out of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, Panama.
Gamboa is a small town in corregimiento of Cristóbal in the Colón Province, Panama close to the Panama Canal and the Chagres River. It was one of a handful of permanent Canal Zone townships, built to house employees of the Panama Canal and their dependents. The name Gamboa is the name of a tree of the quince family.
Elisabeth Klara Viktoria Kalko was a German tropical scientist and ecologist working at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Ulm.
Gatun is a small town on the Atlantic Side of the Panama Canal, located south of the city of Colón at the point in which Gatun Lake meets the channel to the Caribbean Sea. The town is best known as the site of the Panama Canal's Gatun Locks and Gatun Dam, built by the United States between 1906–1914.
Elizabeth Royte is an American science/nature writer. She is best known for her books Garbage Land, The Tapir's Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest, Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It and A Place to Go
Olga Francesca Linares was a Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, and senior staff scientist (emerita) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, who supported much of her research throughout her career. She is well known for her work on the cultural ecology of Panama, and more recently in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal. She is also concerned with the social organization of agrarian systems as well as the relationship between "ecology, political economy, migration and the changing dynamics of food production among rural peoples living in tropical regions".
The Pasoh Forest Reserve, a nature reserve located about 8 km from Simpang Pertang, Malaysia and around 70 km southeast of Kuala Lumpur. It has a total area of 2,450 hectares, with a core area of 600 ha surrounded by a buffer zone. Palm oil plantations surround the reserve on three sides while the other side adjoins a selectively logged dipterocarp forest. An average of 2 metres of rain fall each year, ranging from 1,728 to 3,112 mm. In 1987, a 50 hectare forest dynamics plot was established in the reserve, which began as a collaboration between the Forest Research Institute Malaysia, the Forest Global Earth Observatory, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Three censuses of the tree population in the plot have been carried out, the first in 1989, and have counted about 340,000 trees belonging to 800 species in that plot. The reserve has largely been destroyed by loggers and miners.
The Punta Culebra Nature Center is a visitor center located in Panama City, on one of the islands connected by the Amador Causeway. It is operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, also located in Panamá. The center focuses mainly on marine and terrestrial science and education, conservation and interpretation of marine coastal environments in the tropics. Among its attractions, the Fabulous Frogs of Panama, a touch tank with equinoderms and turtles are some of the exhibits found in Punta Culebra. A trail to a stretch of tropical dry forest is also part of the attractions where free roaming animals such as raccoons, sloths, green iguanas and beautiful birds and butterflies can be found.
Ira Rubinoff is an American marine biologist and was a former director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
James Zetek was an American entomologist and authority on the natural history of Panama.
Egbert Giles Leigh, Jr. is an evolutionary ecologist who spends much of his time studying tropical ecosystems. He is a researcher for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and is well known for the work he has done on Barro Colorado Island. He is a US citizen, but has resided at the Smithsonian in Panama for nearly 50 years. Along with studies on Barro Colorado Island, Leigh is also known for the research he has done related to the Isthmus of Panama and its historical significance on the evolution of South American species.
Annette A. Aiello is an American zoologist, botanical entomologist, and professor. She develops academic activities at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Sericopelma embrithes is a tarantula that is native to Panama. To date, only specimens from Barro Colorado Island have been studied. Like other tarantulas, it is relatively large compared to other spiders. It can grow up to 59 mm long, including its chelicerae. S. embrithes is data deficient according to the IUCN.
Robin B. Foster is a botanist studying tropical forests. He co-originated the "tropical forest dynamics plot".
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