What you can see on the Adjuntas cam
The camera looks at a quiet pool of the Río Yahuecas, a small stream in the hills outside town. Tree ferns spread their fronds over the water, vines and tall grasses crowd the banks, and a white gauge stands in the current to mark the water level. It is a picture of what the rivers of Puerto Rico's interior look like away from the roads: clear and shaded in the dry months, swollen and brown after a heavy storm.
A pool on the Río Yahuecas
At NEON's stream site near Adjuntas, this camera watches the edge between land and water: a calm pool framed by tree ferns, vines dotted with small red flowers and tall grass. The white staff gauge in the water shows the level at a glance.
It is part of a set of instruments that track the stream's height, temperature and water quality at two stations a few hundred meters apart. Over the months the camera records how the banks green up and how the stream swells, which in these hills happens mostly between May and November.
A stream under study
The site belongs to NEON, the U.S. National Ecological Observatory Network, which used to call it Río Guilarte and now names it after the Yahuecas. It lies on the grounds of the University of Puerto Rico's agricultural experiment station at Adjuntas, whose plots grow coffee, citrus, plantains and other crops, and which keeps a collection of coffee and citrus varieties unique in the Caribbean. Instruments along the stream measure its level, temperature and water quality, and scientists described a new species of diatom, a microscopic alga, from samples taken here. The area receives about 1,900 millimeters of rain a year, with low water from December to March and high water from May to November. The endangered Puerto Rican boa and Puerto Rican parrot live in the surrounding hills.
When to watch Adjuntas
The stream is lit best around midday, when the sun reaches into the gully. After a downpour, watch the gauge: the water can rise quickly.
Nearby
Monte Guilarte, at about 1,200 meters one of the highest peaks on the island, rises a few kilometers away inside the Guilarte State Forest, where three of Puerto Rico's rivers begin. Lago Garzas, a mountain reservoir, is a short drive away. In town, Casa Pueblo, a community group founded in 1980, stopped plans for open-pit mining in these mountains, created a people's forest and earned its founder the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2002.
Getting there
Adjuntas is reached by winding mountain roads from Ponce on the south coast or from Utuado to the north. Mornings are often misty, and nights are cooler than on the coast, so pack a layer.
