Tropical forests are undergoing dramatic and directional changes from a variety of causes including global warming, forest fragmentation, and land use trends. Reliable long-term data are needed to document forest change, evaluate hypotheses regarding causal mechanisms, and to propose plans for mitigation and societal response. Certain types of data records should be maintained at every field site, but no single tropical field site can represent every tropical forest. The intention of this workshop is to use the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica as a case study in long-term research and management; through field trips and discussions with scientists, La Selva will be compared and contrasted to other field sites, including Monteverde, Palo Verde, and Las Cruces Biological Stations. In conjunction with the PASI workshop, La Selva hosted an NSF RCN symposium on "Complex Ecological Topics: Challenges and Solutions to Communication".

View of La Selva from the MRI towers, D.Farmer