Gatun Lake is a large freshwater artificial lake to the south of Colón, Panama. At approximately 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, it forms a major part of the Panama Canal, carrying ships 33 km (21 mi) of their transit across the Isthmus of Panama. Gatun Lake was "officially" created June 27, 1913 when the gates of the spillway at Gatun Dam were finally closed, and the world waited for the lake to fill. The water level was about 14.6 m (48 ft) above sea level and was expected to fill to operating levels in the next six months.
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.
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.
Cocha Cashu Biological Station is a tropical biological research station located at 11° 54'S and 71° 22'W in Manú National Park, Peru. It was established in 1969-70, predating the founding of its containing national park. Though only 10 km2 in area, the site has provided valuable research. The station is situated on the shore of an oxbow lake, from which it takes its name. "Qucha" is the Quechua word for lake. "Cashu" is derived from the English word "cashew" and refers to the shape of the lake.
Elisabeth Klara Viktoria Kalko was a German tropical scientist and ecologist working at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Ulm.
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 have 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.
Ira Rubinoff is an American marine biologist and was a former director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
James Zetek (1886–1959) 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.
Julie Sloan Denslow is an American botanist, ecologist and biologist. She grew up in South Florida, and always loved nature. She graduated from Coral Gables Senior High School in 1960. She has contributed to the field of ecology through her work with and research of tropical ecosystems. Earlier in her career, she spent significant time in the field in tropical locations such as Costa Rica and Panama, as well as in temperate locations in Louisiana. and later on in her career she worked more in the office and classroom, but still spent the occasional day in the field. She has focused on research involving the ecology of exotic invasive plant species, and on ecosystem reactions and recovery following disturbances. Denslow is also a strong supporter of gender equality in the natural sciences, pushing for equal representation of women involved in tropical research and leadership during a 2007 Gender Committee Meeting within the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC). Her most notable contribution to tropical research is her paper "Gap Partitioning among Tropical Rainforest Trees", published in 1980.
Jose Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany was initiated in 2001 by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, USA. It is named after José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist and taxonomist who worked on the flora of tropical South America. It is awarded annually to a scientist who has made a very significant contribution to advancing the field of tropical botany. Nominations for the award can be made by all in the Botany Department at the museum.
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".
