Abstract
The occurrence of clouds—fog and humidity in the atmosphere—makes for a unique environmental characteristic. It is a feature that most of us have a difficult time understanding and coming to grips with. Like with temperature, it is quite fuzzy, diverse, three dimensional, and highly dynamic; we can virtually not describe or manage it well, nor really control it (unless the climate of the earth is changed in its entirety by man through carbon release, etc.; a situation we and our children now have to live with for centuries to come). We still lack a meaningful climate and cloud legislation and governance scheme.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter would not be possible without the heroic efforts of my cloud forest classes, specifically the students Hazel Berrios and Rebecca Thome who carried out their projects and who completed a Biodiversity Grid with me. Thanks to them. Other classes and students were brave enough to do a “little” (1-day) volcano hike, sometimes over the mountaintop. The Maderas Rainforest Conservancy encouraged us to carry out this work. The UAF Writing Center gratefully improved the English. We also acknowledge the sporty pursuits of Thomas Devon from Norway for the geocache on the crater lake, c. 1000 m high (proven to be empty against his belief), but which enabled us to collect some great GPS orientation and mapping data.
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Huettmann, F. (2015). Conservation Research in the Cloud Forest of Central America with Lessons from Maderas Volcano, Ometepe, Nicaragua: A First-Person Narrative About Very Tough Fieldwork, Unfinished Data, and Climate Justice While Running Out of Time. In: Huettmann, F. (eds) Central American Biodiversity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2208-6_17
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