It’s really hard to believe, but I will already be departing Panama tomorrow. When I arrived a week ago, on February 5, I had a hunch but didn’t fully appreciate just how busy our AVUELO ground and airborne teams would be keeping up with our ambitious sampling and data collection plans and schedule. For me personally, getting to participate in the campaign was exciting because it meant a continuation of my past tropical forest research in Panama, which included similar sampling and objectives at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s (STRI) crane sites and on Barro Colorado Island.
I had some expectation of how long and challenging the field days would be, especially when they are repeated for multiple days in a row. Yet for AVUELO, the sheer scale and scope of logistical coordination across multiple teams and locations, instrumentation, and lab analyses have been impressive to witness, including how well the whole team has stepped up to meet the challenges and the correspondingly long days in the field and lab. The whole team has come together to support the goals and interests of everyone involved, and it’s been humbling to witness how quickly the team gelled and really became a “well-oiled” machine. I will surely miss helping with sample processing after I depart!
Thinking back, our first field day at the Smithsonian Parque Natural Metropolitano canopy crane resulted in far more samples to process in the lab than we expected. Despite some remaining uncertainty and a late start on our first sampling day, the team quickly found their sample collection groove and continued the same basic approach until our final sampling day on February 11. Over our time here, the incredibly skilled STRI crane operators, Edwin Andrade and Oscar Saldaña, made sure we could access and collect the samples we needed with ease in order to link with the remote sensing data. We even had some extra help from the forest locals.
In the STRI labs in Gamboa, folks have been busily processing the samples coming in from multiple sites across Panama to try and keep up with field teams. As is common at this point in a campaign, the lab mimics an assembly line, with samples rapidly moving between stations to measure leaf area, leaf water content, and leaf optical properties, as well as prepare samples for other analytical measurements to happen at a later time. Given AVUELO is a hyperspectral remote sensing campaign, we had to have our spectrometers in the lab to measure leaf-level reflectance and transmittance (photos below). With these data, we are building a very comprehensive spectral library that we will use to estimate foliar functional traits and to inform tropical scaling and spectral modeling research.
AVUELO also represents a multi-year dream of mine to be able to link years of field campaigns in Panama to AVIRIS imagery. It has been incredible to finally see NASA AVIRIS imagery over these sites in Panama, where scientists have already been building a data record for more than a century.
We have been lucky enough to have multiple flight days already, and I am hopeful there will be more, but the data already collected will provide incredible new research opportunities. I am looking forward to working together to develop the products and datasets the community can use to conduct novel science and make new discoveries!
Despite just how busy we all have been, we also had time for other activities. On February 7, Natalia L Quinteros Casaverde, a postdoctoral research associate at NASA Goddard, provided a seminar in Spanish during the STRI seminar series.
Those in attendance had many great questions, and it’s clear this campaign is generating a lot of interest from the community, and our team is eager to help support the use of the data! We also had time to visit Casco Viejo (photo below), though I never did have a chance to jump in the hotel pool. It’s bittersweet to head home, but I look forward to working with the team on data analysis and maybe even coming back to Panama soon to visit, conduct science, and continue to contribute to the rich history of tropical forest research. So long, and thanks for all the leaves!
Tags: AVUELO 2025, tropical ecosystems
