News from the field but no lightning
Field update from Panama featuring lightning, drones, and Gigantes.
Hello from Barro Colorado Island in Panama! The DEAD lab has been busy these past few weeks as research is ramping up in support of the lightning project and Gigante. In late September, Evan and Ian traveled to the island to start trying to find recent lightning strikes using the electromagnetic sensors set up across central Panama. Unfortunately, they quickly found out that due to El Niño this year there have been very few storms compared to a normal wet season, and those that have developed have had very few actual lightning strikes on the ground. In fact, lightning isn’t the only thing that’s been affected by the weather patterns; the canal is at its lowest water level in recent years, in some spots holding steady at 2m below what it should be. Instead of searching for new strikes from a drone flight the previous week that Jeff flew, Ian got to work processing previous drone imagery to see if there were older strikes the lab could hike to. After a team effort of finding potential strikes and gaps in the orthomosaics, Evan, Jeff, Matt, and Ian together spent several days walking through the rainforest for a couple reasons. First, Ian and Matt were trained on how identify lightning strikes, and second, we all developed and tested a field survey protocol for the lightning project in the long run. Despite the heat, at least only one of the days had a full downpour!
Besides the field work, Evan - along with Vanessa and collaborator Dr. Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert - has fully started on the Gigante project by creating the protocol for site visits that will eventually expand to other sites across the Tropics.