Cette étude cherche à contribuer à une meilleure compréhension du système de la Forêt modèle Reventazón (FMR), un sous-système du Réseau international des forêts modèles (RIFM), et son interaction potentielle avec d'autres forêts modèles du RIFM. Dans un tel contexte, l’approche systémique permettra d’étudier le sous-système de la FMR où diverses composantes sont organisées et interagissent entre elles. Cette étude analysera d’abord une des composantes de la FMR : les pratiques agroforestières avec cultures annuelles dans la partie nord du bassin versant de la rivière Reventazón. Une méthodologie qualitative sera ensuite développée afin d’ordonner par priorité les éléments échangeables ou transférables entre au moins deux forêts modèles du RIFM, puis appliquée à la FMR (Costa Rica) et à la Forêt modèle du Bas-Saint-Laurent (Canada). Cette étude démontrera le potentiel d'établir des liens plus rapprochés entre ces sites en développant des opportunités de collaboration horizontale et de partage des connaissances. / The purpose of this investigation is to develop a better understanding of the Reventazón Model Forest's (RMF) system, a subsystem of the International Model Forest Network (IMFN), and its potential interaction with other model forests of the IMFN. In this context, the system approach is used to examine the RMF subsystem, within which a variety of components are organized and interconnected. This study first carries out the analysis of one of the RMF components: the agroforestry practices with annual crops in the northern part of the Reventazón watershed. A qualitative methodology is then developed and applied to facilitate the priority ranking of elements potentially transferrable or exchangeable between at least two model forests through the comparison of the RMF (Costa Rica) and the Bas-Saint-Laurent Model Forest (Canada). This study demonstrates the prospect that exists for these sites to establish a closer relationship by engaging in horizontal collaboration and knowledge sharing opportunities.

Leaf traits have long been used to classify and characterise species in natural ecosystems. In addition, leaf traits provide important information about plants’ strategies for the use of resources and can be used to improve our understanding of ecosystem level processes such as nutrient cycling and carbon allocation. To explore the linkages between leaf traits and productivity, we worked in two resource-limited ecosystems (a grassland and a forest), and used leaf traits to understand how species respond to changes in available resources and their relationship to ecosystem processes. We worked in a species rich limestone-grassland located in central England, which has been subjected to long-term climatic manipulation (winter warming, summer drought and extra summer rainfall). We characterised species composition in terms of their identity, abundance and leaf structural properties (nitrogen content and leaf mass per area (LMA)) in the main treatments and the control. We found that change in species abundance was the most important factor to understand the differences in productivity (above ground biomass and total foliar nitrogen). We then measured CO2 exchange at ecosystem level, using a chamber technique, and assessed the treatments’ effect on the gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Reco). GPP and Reco were controlled by soil moisture and above ground biomass but also influenced by the conditions experienced during the growing season prior to the measuring period. Our second location was a post-disturbance chronosequence in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Costa Rica and we used leaf level gas exchange measurements to explore the role of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) on the temporal-spatial variation of photosynthesis of dominant species. We found that photosynthetic efficiency was strongly linked to leaf N and P content, but that there was an important seasonal pattern on this relationship likely associated to P remobilization. Additionally we found seasonal changes in resources (water, nutrients) had a larger impact on the photosynthetic parameters than changes along the chronosequence. The two ecosystems studied for this thesis are contrasting in their physiognomy, species composition and climate, but are also characterised by species whose structural traits (high LMA and high C:N ratio) are likely to have a significant impact on the nutrient cycling processes. We learned that leaf traits provide important information about species strategies and their usage of resources and they can also aid to address questions at ecosystem level in time and space, either through simple aggregation or as emergent properties. Additionally, the traits explored are important input information to up-scale processes from leaf to the ecosystem level, a step needed to address the effect changes in resources will have on the seasonally dry tropical forest and grasslands, which represent a significant fraction of the total global carbon storage.

Over the past ten years, the Costa Rican dance style known as swing criollo has gone from relative obscurity to acceptance as national heritage. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was considered a dance of the urban working-class chusma, or "riff-raff," because of its associations with the working-class music of cumbia and San José's seedy dance salons. Starting in the early 2000s, however, an active campaign of nationalization and folklorization by dance instructors brought the dance to the status of national patrimony. This was achieved through dance classes, festival performances, the creation of a short video documentary, and the work of the dance company La Cuna del Swing to canonize the dancers and stages of swing criollo. The folklorization of swing criollo at first seems to be a top-down phenomenon that suggests little agency among working-class dancers; they have been personified in the national imaginary as exotic Others, an urban folk from an earlier generation that now exists only to perform and embody that tradition. On further examination, the folklorization of swing criollo represents a new sort of folklore, one that is highly contested and engages in a different discourse of authenticity, some influenced by dancers themselves. Swing criollo as a "modern" and "urban" form has allowed for self-mythmaking among the dancers of the self-proclaimed "old guard" that invented the style. It also legitimizes the dance style in its popular form, as opposed to older projections of folklore that that place tradition in opposition to modernity. I examine discourses surrounding the nationalization of swing criollo as well as the negotiations of spaces of culture through which swing's legitimization unfolded. I conclude by suggesting that ethnomusicologists should continue to theorize folklore's changing nature as it is contested and re-defined to include popular, urban, and modern cultural expressions. / text

Despite the dramatic increase in ecotourism as a sustainable development strategy over the last two decades (Honey 2008; Yunis 2000), theoretical models to interpret and evaluate ecotourism—as well as the broader field of tourism—are lacking (Farrell and Twining-Ward 2003; Weaver and Lawton 2007). Farrell and Twining-Ward (2003) call for a reconceptualization of tourism study that incorporates social-ecological systems (SES) theory. This dissertation responds by assessing ecotourism as an SES in a dryland setting, addressing the question: "What key characteristics of ecotourism increase social-ecological resilience?" The study site is Santa Rosa National Park and surrounding communities in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Higham and Lück (2008) cite sustainability as the "ultimate goal of ecotourism" (Higham and Lück 2008, p 124); however sustainability itself proves to be a difficult concept to measure and evaluate (Cater and Lowman 1994; Dernbach 2002; Weaver 2001a). SES theory recognizes sustainability as a process rather than an end goal and identifies resilience as a key attribute (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003). With ecotourism as an economic strategy of nearly every developing country since the early 1990s and an increasing economic strategy in rural areas worldwide (Valaoras, Pistolas, and Sotiropoulou 2002; Honey 2008), this study investigates ecotourism through the lens of social-ecological resilience for increased sustainability. Based on a 12-month survey conducted in Santa Rosa National Park and the surrounding area, this study identifies characteristics of ecotourism that can cause different levels of resilience using indicators of increasing biodiversity, economic diversity and social capital. These relationships are represented by linked and continually changing social and ecological systems, diagramed by Holling‘s adaptive renewal cycle (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003; Gunderson and Holling 2002). Three research papers are included as part of this dissertation: 1) Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Parque Nacional Santa Rosa Ecotourism Study: Final Survey Results, Analysis and Recommendations; 2) Ecotourism‘s Contribution to Social-ecological Resilience: A Case Study Analysis of Rural, Dryland Ecotourism in Guanacaste, Costa Rica; and 3) Barrier-free Ecotourism? The Costa Rican Approach. Findings of this study include recommendations for ecotourism programs to increase social-ecological resilience and contribute to the sustainability of linked SESs.

For decades LGBTQ rights have been approached purely by a legal strategy, in particular advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community continues to be a major issue in Latin America because of cultural values such as Catholicism and machismo that uphold a standard of and, in turn, have control over people’s sexuality. Using a human rights approach towards the politics of sexuality, LGBTI activists in Costa Rican and Nicaragua have been successful in transforming public opinion about sexuality and more importantly, sexual diversity. As a result of their egalitarian framework and efforts to educate people about sexual diversity, they have made great advancements toward achieving acceptance and equality for LGBTI people. This study focuses on how Costa Rican and Nicaraguan LGBTI activists have worked around traditional cultural values such as Catholicism and machismo that prevent people from accepting and tolerating LGBTI people. The examples of LGBTI activists in these two countries have important implications for other LGBTI activists and the strategies they use to try to achieve full equality (social and legal) for people whose sexual identity differs from the conventional.

This PhD thesis explores the migration dynamics between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Rather than just describing the main characteristics of the contemporary migration relations between the two countries, however, it also evaluates the historical and regional contexts within which they have been produced. This has implied the incorporation of a historicised and multi-scale analytical perspective which has been adopted throughout the research. The research therefore explores both expelling and attracting factors in both the origin (with a particular focus upon rural communities in distinct regions of Nicaragua) and the destination. It has also been important to analyse in some detail the continuities and ruptures of the migration history between the two countries in order to understand the current migration dynamics more profoundly. The research stresses that the Nicaraguan Costa Rican migration dynamic should not be seen as as isolated bilateral relationship but as part of a wider dynamic that involves the whole Central American region and that, in general terms, migration should be seen not as an isolated pattern but as a wider process of social transformation.

1. A longstanding goal of ecology and conservation biology is to understand the environmental and biological controls of forest succession. However, the patterns and mechanisms that guide successional trajectories, especially within tropical forests, remain unclear. 2. We collected leaf functional trait and abiotic data across a 110-year chronosequence within a tropical dry forest in Costa Rica. Focusing on six key leaf functional traits related to resource acquisition and competition, along with measures of forest stand structure, we propose a mechanistic framework to link species composition, community trait distributions and forest structure. We quantified the community-weighted trait distributions for specific leaf area, leaf dry matter concentration, leaf phosphorus concentration, leaf carbon to nitrogen ratio and leaf stable isotopic carbon and nitrogen. We assessed several prominent hypotheses for how these functional measures shift in response to changing environmental variables (soil water content, bulk density and pH) across the chronosequence. 3. Increasingly, older forests differed significantly from younger forests in species composition, above-ground biomass and shifted trait distributions. Early stages of succession were uniformly characterized by lower values of community-weighted mean specific leaf area, leaf stable nitrogen isotope and leaf phosphorus concentration. Leaf dry matter concentration and leaf carbon to nitrogen ratio were lower during earlier stages of succession, and each trait reached an optimum during intermediate stages of succession. The leaf carbon isotope ratio was the only trait to decrease linearly with increasing stand age indicating reduced water use efficiency in older forests. However, in contrast with expectations, community-weighted trait variances did not generally change through succession, and when compared to null expectations were lower than expected. 4. The observed directional shift in community-weighted mean trait values is consistent with the 'productivity filtering' hypothesis where a directional shift in water and light availability shifts physiological strategies from 'slow' to 'fast'. In contrast with expectations arising from niche based ecology, none of the community trait distributions were over-dispersed. Instead, patterns of trait dispersion are consistent with the abiotic filtering and/or competitive hierarchy hypotheses.

This paper argues that a State can reconstruct it’s own politics in such a way that allows for more reliance on conflict resolving international organizations and institutions and can reduce the need for military force and/or power politics. Accordingly, the complexities of the security dilemma can be reduced or eliminated. I utilize a single case study approach that analyzes the 2010 territorial conflict known as the ‘Isla Calero’ dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Using both an inductive approach and semistructured interviews, this paper analyzes how the dispute was settled without the use of power politics. It is argued that Costa Rica was able to halt the cycle of the security dilemma through their decision to demilitarize. Moreover, I argue that Costa Rica’s approach is relevant and applicable to other states and could contribute to successful conflict resolution between States without the use of power politics.

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No description available.