Jocelyn KaiserMOUNT CHIRRIPÓ IN COSTA RICA—Framed by drifting clouds, ecologist Andrea Vincent surveyed the hot tub–size dome her students had erected here at nearly 3800 meters, on Costa Rica’s highest peak. “We did it!” she exulted.
Vincent’s team from the University of Costa Rica (UCR) had made the steep 15-kilometer hike up to this tropical alpine landscape—known as a páramo—in a bid to understand how global warming might affect the mosaic of shrubs and grasses.
The team had built 20 of the open-topped domes, which block the winds that buffet the slopes, thus slightly warming the plants inside and mimicking conditions they might experience in the future. “There are interesting questions here,” Vincent says.