Today was sunny without rain for the entire day, our meteorological miracle. We went out along a river trail, hanging heavy pinkbelly piper plants up in the canopy, in an effort to find the effects of altitude on the plants and the small ecosystems surrounding them. As small differences here can make a massive difference, a difference of 15-20 feet can have an entirely different result on the kind of bugs that would colonize them.
What this involved was having a group of us stomp a mile or so onto the trail and using the ropes that were put up in the previous days and belaying the plants up. Kind of tricky, actually and it needed the 3 sets of hands yhat we had along to make it happen.
Later, Andrea, one of the doctoral students running this experiment, and I went off to the sites to take pictures and document the locations. It's a beautiful trail and the sun was beaming down through the trees in a way I haven't seen yet. Curiously, this could mess up the readings we took as it will usually be cloudy here. Tomorrow, we'll take more readings in the hopes of crappier weather...
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