YAUCO_LAB
Fostering Highlands Knowledge & Practices
YaucoLab is a collaborative skunkworks supported by Hacienda Masini that supports education, research, and experimentation on resilient systems and practices, in order to deepen awareness and foster conservation of Puerto Rico’s highlands. Browse YaucoLab and other resources, or become a Research Fellow or Lab Intern.
Research by Fain et al. projects difficult conditions for Specialty Coffee in Puerto Rico, and illustrates the need to anticipate and adapt to coming challenges.
To support connectivity the farm has set aside large tracts of mature forest and created habitat corridors in key riparian and ridge areas to strengthen connections.
Hacienda Masini occupies critical territory in the conservation vision of the Bosque Modelo, a migration and resiliency project to connect and strengthen the island's most vital forests.
More than 50 birds, many endemic, call Hacienda Masini home or flyway, making its forests and habitat critical in bird and other wildlife conservation. Hacienda Masini donates 10% of all island sales to NatuCaribe, which supports regional biodiversity education.
Anchoring Yauco’s central highlands, Hacienda Masini provides critical soil conservation and water quality to downstream communities.
Recent research to map slides that resulted from Hurricane Maria illustrate the key role roads, even abandoned for a century, play in triggering mass soil displacements through landslides.
To increase coffee yields, many farmers cut down shade trees, exposing fragile soils to storm wind and water. In this image, Hacienda Masini's conserved woodlands are the foreground, while more destructive traditional practices (not ours!) are in the background.
'El Centenario.' Hacienda Masini supports educational groups and activities. By exploring the connections and contrast between Yauco's rainy highlands and its dry lowlands, students learn about Yauco and Puerto Rico's incredible biodiversity and the important connections between highlands and lowlands.