Living in the Arizona desert, clouds are a rare occurrence. But in the Andean highlands, they are everything. The cloud forest (bosque nublado) that dominates these mountains can change its character rapidly, and so imposes its rhythms on its inhabitants. The first thing to understand is where cloud forest comes from. Clouds form as moist…

A field campaign is not very different than a space launch. After seven weeks of fieldwork in Peru, I’ve returned from our expedition and have been contemplating the long journeys we made, laden with supplies and scientists. Like a space mission, we aim for inhospitable destinations in far-away places. The steep slopes of the cloud…

Measuring plants is surprisingly controversial, and often very difficult. Consider, for example, deciding how to measure the size of a leaf: include the petiole or not? if there are multiple leaflets? if the leaf is ten meters long? Ask ten ecologists and you will likely hear ten different answers, all of which may seem appropriate…

After a month of fieldwork in the eastern Andes, I have arrived in Cusco for a brief contact with the wider world and wanted to share a small vignette from this project. The overall aim is to predict carbon fluxes in forests using simple measurements. Dozens of people from several universities are working on the…