Reforestation in the Panama Canal watershed: Assessing the ecosystem

The Panama Canal is a critically important waterway for global trade, through which more than 275 million metric tons of cargo passes each year.  At present 38% of the goods traded between Asia and the eastern coast of the U.S. transit the Canal, a market share that is expected to rise to 50% by 2025.  As each transit of the Canal requires 200,000 cubic meters of freshwater and as the watershed is responsible for providing drinking water for the cities of Panama and Colon, the Canal watershed is a vitally important local and global resource.  In addition to providing water, the Canal watershed also provides other locally and globally important environmental services.  The forests within the watershed sequester vast amounts of carbon, are important for biodiversity conservation both for their high diversity of organisms and the fact that they are a critical link in the Meso-American corridor.  They are also relied upon by local people for a variety of products.  Against this backdrop, the Yale School of Forestry, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and other partners undertook the Native Species Reforestation Project (PRORENA) in 2001.  We seek native species alternatives to the use of exotic species in reforestation efforts, which make up over 90% of reforestation efforts in Panama.  We further seek to understand trade offs between different reforestation strategies within the Panama Canal Zone as well as the environmental services provided by forests and plantations.  Research results from the first five years of PRORENA and will be discussed in the context of a large scale project to understand environmental services provided by forests and plantations in the Panama Canal Watershed that began in 2007.