The world’s most studied rainforest is still yielding new insights
Even after a century of research, Barro Colorado in Panama continues to shed light on natural life
CONSERVATIONISTS GENERALLY disapprove of flooding species-rich habitats. But the law of unintended consequences works in mysterious ways. For it was just such a flood, in 1913, that created Barro Colorado Island in central Panama. Gatun, the lake surrounding the island, was, at the time of its birth, the largest artificial body of water in the world. It formed the middle passage of the Panama Canal. Barro Colorado, meanwhile, has become the most intensively scrutinised scrap of tropical rainforest on Earth.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “One hundred years of plenitude”
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