The Las Cruces Biological Station / Wilson Botanical Garden is located in the southern

Puntarenas Puntarenas () is a city in the Puntarenas (canton), Puntarenas canton of Puntarenas Province, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. As the seat of the Municipality of Puntarenas canton, it is awarded the title of city, which is made from the Puntar ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

, and is the newest of the three

research station Research stations are facilities where scientific investigation, collection, analysis and experimentation occurs. A research station is a facility that is built for the purpose of conducting scientific research. There are also many types of resear ...

s operated by the

Organization for Tropical Studies The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), founded in 1963, is a non-profit consortium of over 50 universities and research institutions based in the United States, Latin America, and South Africa. OTS manages a network of ecological research s ...

(OTS). Las Cruces includes a biological research station, tourist facilities, and the botanical gardens started by Robert and Catherine Wilson, and bequeathed to OTS. Heliconia hirsuta 1zz

Las Cruces is located in a mountainous region at an elevation of approximately 1,000

meters above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

(m.a.s.l.). Surrounded mostly by

pastures Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine ...

coffee plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

s and other agricultural areas, Las Cruces includes a relatively small 270 Ha forest fragment that ranges from 900–1300 m.a.s.l. As such, much of the research conducted here focuses on

agroecology Agroecology (US: a-grō-ē-ˈkä-lə-jē) is an academic discipline that studies ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems. Bringing ecological principles to bear can suggest new management approaches in agroecosystems. The ...

or studies of

forest fragmentation Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes ...

References

External links

OTS webpage for Las Cruces
Biological stations {{CostaRica-stub