FIELDS OF DREAMS // Anatomy of an experiment

DATE                  09/25/94
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  L08
STORY LENGTH          17 INCHES
HEADLINE              FIELDS OF DREAMS // Anatomy of an experiment
BYLINE/CREDIT         DAN FROOMKIN:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         OC:COLLEGES:FACULTY:CENTRAL 
                         AMERICA:AGRICULTURE:LAND:PLANTS:RESEARCH:REPAIR:TREES:
                         BIOLOGY:SCIENCE
 .
     She had a hunch; now she's testing it.
     Lynn Carpenter's hope is that barren pastures can be restored
  and sustained if farmers replant native trees, intermixed with
  crops that will provide a living while the trees grow.
     But what trees? What crops? How should they be cultivated?
     And will it work?
     A map Carpenter carries around in a Ziploc bag to keep out the
  ever-present damp shows how the first and, so far, biggest
  experiment on her farm has been designed.
     Scientific hypotheses are one thing. "The real magic comes in
  designing experiments that can test your hypothesis," Carpenter
  says.
     At the heart of the experiment are nearly 4,000 saplings of a
  much-loved native tree called Amarillon, which grows 200 feet tall
  and has a striking round canopy and yellow wood highlighted by red
  streaks.
     They were planted as seedlings a year ago at nine-foot intervals.
     Alongside the Amarillon, Carpenter is planting two kinds of
  low-growing beans, a fruit tree, a bean tree, and a tree known as
  the "living fence" because its branches, used as fence posts, grow
  into trees themselves in the Costa Rican climate.
     Some of the crops are known to restore nitrogen to depleted
  soil. The living fence, on top of everything else, has insecticidal
  qualities that keep some pests away.
     Carpenter is testing nine planting methods in all, including a
  mix of crops and the Amarillon alone and with fertilizer.
     And to get results that really mean something, she has made the
  test a gigantic one.
     Each of the nine methods is tested in five separate plots of 93
  trees each, for a total of 45 parcels spread around the natural
  amphitheater that extends east from her house.
     To assure that no single method benefits from better growing
  conditions than the others, the 45 parcels are grouped into sets of
  nine, each of which shares similar topography -- all steep, facing
  south, for instance, or all flat.
     Eventually, using elaborate analyses that take a slew of
  variables into account, Carpenter expects to be able to determine
  with authority which kinds of interplanting work best with
  Amarillon.
     At the same time that Carpenter is drawing a bead on the crops
  that work best with the native tree, she also is learning and
  chronicling more basic information about the trees.
     Among the many factors that she records meticulously in her
  notebooks is the parentage of her trees. They are all cataloged by
  "seed mother" -- allowing her to distinguish the good mothers, whose
  seeds survive and grow well, from the bad.
     Collecting even the simplest information about native trees --
  identifying good genetic lines and recording seed-cultivation and
  germination methods -- will considerably increase the amount of
  knowledge about forestry in the tropics.