A UAH student's innovative research on forest cover in Panama has been selected for the Council on Undergraduate Research's Posters on the Hill session April 28 and 29 at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Now a UAH graduate student, as an undergraduate Casey Calamaio applied to the geosciences division of the poster competition and conducted his research on rates of Panama Canal Zone forestation from the 1920s to the present. He is only the third student from Alabama to make the trip in the past nine years. Surprisingly, there is more forest cover in the Panama Canal Zone today than there was in the 1920s, Calamaio's research finds. "Most of that forest is secondary growth, but the cover is more dense now," he says, a finding that he attributes to the Panamanian government's reforestation and conservation efforts since the 1970s. "In the older images from the 1920s through the 1950s, what you see are basically a lot of cleared areas." The regrowth of forest has a direct impact on biodiversity in an area that is considered one of the world's diversity hotspots. "Panama is such a dynamic area, with all the shipping and the changes that have come with the canal," Calamaio says, "and it is also an isthmus that serves as the link between North and South America to serve as a conduit for plants and animals."