My name is Anna Vrioni, and I am a senior in NRES with a concentration in Fish and Wildlife Conservation. Last spring semester, I studied abroad with the School for Field Studies in Costa Rica at their Center for Sustainable Development Studies. It was an environmentally-focused program, so classes included topics like tropical ecology, natural resource management, tourism development, agriculture, and environmental ethics. I chose this program because I wanted to do a very hands-on, field-based program. The semester also included a week-long trip to Panama to contrast the national park system, agriculture, and tourism between Panama and Costa Rica.

One major aspect of this program was to learn about the state of agriculture in Costa Rica and discover some innovative ways that some farmers are implementing sustainable practices on their farms. We visited places like a turmeric farm run by a group of women who built their composting practices from the ground up, and a coffee farm that is using coffee fruit, which usually goes to waste, to create innovative products like coffee wine, coffee flour, and coffee fruit tea. Seeing these places in action showed me how much can be done to make agriculture more sustainable with just a little creativity. It also inspired me to want to learn where my food comes from and the practices that occur at these places.

During my semester abroad I completed a directed research project with some other students and my tropical ecology professor. We spent a week in a remote cloud forest collecting data on bird diversity and acoustics. This involved waking up very early in the morning to mist net and set up sound recorders for birds, spending most of the day analyzing data, and staying up into the night with a graduate student who was mist netting for bats. From this data we were hoping to assess acoustic patterns of our focal species and also determine whether future potential road noise could impact the acoustic composition of the bird community. Questions like these are becoming more relevant as climate change and development continue to impact areas like the tropical cloud forest. 

In many environmental science classes you learn how significant the tropics are for biodiversity and evolution, and how threatened they are from many sources, such as deforestation and development. To see and study these places in person was a truly indescribable experience that reignited my passion for environmental issues. Additionally, interacting with Costa Ricans and practicing the Spanish language in a Spanish-speaking country was a unique experience that strengthened my confidence and conversational skills.