About the Station

Applied research grounded in the tropical agricultural landscape.

Institutional mission

Advancing science through place-based inquiry.

To advance scientific knowledge and develop practical applications for tropical agricultural resources through research in regenerative agroforestry, botanical science, and circular economic systems.

Our vision: agricultural systems in which scientific innovation, ecological stewardship, and economic productivity reinforce one another.

Central research question

What can more complete resource utilization make possible?

How can tropical agricultural systems utilize biological resources more completely while maintaining ecological function and improving economic viability?

This question connects our investigations in botanical characterization, experimental processing, field ecology, and agricultural economic analysis.

Scientific philosophy

Evidence before conclusions.

Projects begin with defined questions and methods appropriate to the investigation. We distinguish preliminary observations from established findings and evaluate technical, economic, and ecological implications without presuming favorable outcomes.

Applied science

Research & Technological Development

Study open questions in coffee agroforestry, botanical processing and farm economics that may inform practical field applications.

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Organizational structure

Research and commercialization are distinct.

Copper Hill Research Station is a research operation based at Copper Hill Farm in western Puerto Rico. Its research is kept separate from the commercial manufacturing and distribution of any product. Funding, intellectual property and collaboration terms are addressed project by project.

History in the landscape

Coffee haciendas, then forest.

The 2022 Forest Stewardship Plan records remains of old coffee-hacienda water reservoirs and coffee drying floors (“glaciles”) on the property, after a long history of coffee followed by secondary-forest regrowth.

Research since 2019

Field work at Copper Hill began in 2019. Soil and site baseline work followed in 2022, and economic modeling and processing trials expanded the program in 2024 and 2025. The Whole Tree Economic Model thesis was published in 2026.

Copper Hill Research Station is based at Copper Hill Farm in Las Marías & Maricao, Puerto Rico.

Research network

Where the research happens

Copper Hill Farm, in Las Marías & Maricao, Puerto Rico, is the Station’s principal research site. The research program is directed from Puerto Rico, where its principal research is carried out and where the intellectual property it produces is owned. Some projects include work with independent collaborators at other sites.

Principal research site: Copper Hill Farm, Las Marías & Maricao, Puerto Rico. Research direction, field programs, research-batch coffee-leaf processing, site baseline work, and the Whole Tree Economic Model case study.
Collaborating field site: Nicaragua. Observation of field-scale coffee-leaf harvesting and processing at an independent farm.
Collaborating brewing trials: Portland, Maine. Immersion and drip extraction trials.

Programs and collaborators

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS): Conservation planning for the farm’s forest and agroforestry areas, with field-office reviews from 2022 and a forest management plan completed in 2026 (Studies 05 and 11).
AgroforestryX: Copper Hill is working with AgroforestryX (NRCS) and is among the first to implement it. Used to design the forest-farming and agroforestry plots since 2025 (Study 05).
Independent environmental consultant: Forest management planning, vegetation and fauna inventories, and agroforestry design since 2022 (Studies 08 and 11).
USDA Climate-Smart Commodities project: Participant in a USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities project in Puerto Rico, 2023–2028: shade-tree planting and biochar in the coffee plots (Study 01).
Independent forestry consultant: Forest Stewardship Plan for Copper Hill Farm, July 2022 to June 2032, prepared by an independent forestry consultant, including bird counts (Studies 06 and 08).

Related research and past programs

Related published research: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Study 04 draws on published coffee-leaf research by associated researchers; see Publications.
USDA NRCS conservation contract: Terraces, cover cropping and erosion controls, 2019–2024 (Study 05).

Each study record lists its principal site and any collaborating site. Collaborators are independent of the Station. Their published work keeps its original authors and institutions, and listing them here does not mean they endorse the Station.