Examination of microclimatic effects on temperature and humidity on San Cristóbal Island, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

The Galápagos Islands are one of the most biodiverse places in the world, home to many endemic species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants. In the past decades agriculture has expanded to meet local demand and governmental sustainability initiatives. Along with the introduction of invasive species, land use change has greatly impacted the landscape of the island. Temperature differences in remote ecological settings are a field that has had plenty of theoretical research, but surprisingly little observational research. Often, a lapse rate-based model is used to estimate temperature differences in such areas. Dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates can give an approximate temperature based on ground observations, however in complex terrain this is an oversimplification. We currently have placed 10 MX2302a HOBOMobile Bluetooth Connected Weather Microsensors in aerated housings that are spread across the island along one of the major roads on the island, each being carefully placed in different plant zones as the road changes elevation. Each sensor records the temperature, humidity, and dew point in each location, every minute of every day. These sensors were placed in March 2023 and will remain until March 2025. This experiment is giving an unprecedented view of the microclimatic difference across the island. This study focuses on a comparison between the lapse rate driven temperatures and based on a sea level elevation weather station in our study and the actual observations made at 9 or 10 different weather stations that we installed for this study. The goal is to find the differences between the lapse rate driven model temperatures and the actual observations in order to highlight potential microclimatic influences including land use, aspect, slope, and windward-leeward dynamics. In particular, this study focused on differences in the local rainy versus dry seasons.