Laretia Acaulis, a Cushion Plant of the Andes: Ethnobotanical Aspects and the Impact of Its Harvesting

1983 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Alliende ◽  
A. J. Hoffmann
2006 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lohengrin A. Cavieres ◽  
Ernesto I. Badano ◽  
Angela Sierra-Almeida ◽  
Susana Gomez-Gonzalez ◽  
Marco A. Molina-Montenegro

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Alain Hambuckers ◽  
Simon de Harenne ◽  
Eberth Rocha Ledezma ◽  
Lilian Zúñiga Zeballos ◽  
Louis François

Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used with climate only to predict animal distribution changes. This approach however neglects the evolution of other components of the niche, like food resource availability. SDMs are also commonly used with plants. This also suffers limitations, notably an inability to capture the fertilizing effect of the rising CO2 concentration strengthening resilience to water stress. Alternatively, process-based dynamic vegetation models (DVMs) respond to CO2 concentration. To test the impact of the plant modelling method to model plant resources of animals, we studied the distribution of a Bolivian macaw, assuming that, under future climate, DVMs produce more conservative results than SDMs. We modelled the bird with an SDM driven by climate. For the plant, we used SDMs or a DVM. Under future climates, the macaw SDM showed increased probabilities of presence over the area of distribution and connected range extensions. For plants, SDMs did not forecast overall response. By contrast, the DVM produced increases of productivity, occupancy and diversity, also towards higher altitudes. The results offered positive perspectives for the macaw, more optimistic with the DVM than with the SDMs, than initially assumed. Nevertheless, major common threats remain, challenging the short-term survival of the macaw.


Author(s):  
Julio F. Carrión

The relationship between populism and democracy is a hotly debated topic. Some believe that populism is inherently bad for democracy because it is anti-pluralist and confrontational. Others argue that populism can reinvigorate worn-out democracies in need of an infusion of greater popular participation. This book advances this debate by examining the empirical relationship between populism in power and democracy. Does populism in power always lead to regime change, that is, the demise of democracy? The answer is no. The impact of populism on democracy depends on the variety of populism in power: the worst outcomes in democratic governance are found under unconstrained populism. This book discusses the conditions that explain how populism becomes unconstrained, and advances a dynamic theory of change that shows how the late victories of populists build on early ones, resulting in greater power asymmetries. The book analyzes five populist presidencies in the Andes. In four of them (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela), populism became unconstrained and regime change followed. In one case, Colombia, populism in power was contained and democracy survived. The concluding chapter places the Andean cases in comparative perspective and discusses how unconstrained populism in other cases (Nicaragua and Hungary) also lead to the end of electoral democracy. Where populism in power was constrained (Honduras and the United States), regime change did not materialize. This book advances a theory of populism that help us understand how democracies transition into non-democracies. To that extent, the book illuminates the processes of democratic erosion in our time.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Guallpa ◽  
Johanna Orellana-Alvear ◽  
Jörg Bendix

Weather radar networks are an excellent tool for quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE), due to their high resolution in space and time, particularly in remote mountain areas such as the Tropical Andes. Nevertheless, reduction of the temporal and spatial resolution might severely reduce the quality of QPE. Thus, the main objective of this study was to analyze the impact of spatial and temporal resolutions of radar data on the cumulative QPE. For this, data from the world’s highest X-band weather radar (4450 m a.s.l.), located in the Andes of Ecuador (Paute River basin), and from a rain gauge network were used. Different time resolutions (1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 60 min) and spatial resolutions (0.5, 0.25, and 0.1 km) were evaluated. An optical flow method was validated for 11 rainfall events (with different features) and applied to enhance the temporal resolution of radar data to 1-min intervals. The results show that 1-min temporal resolution images are able to capture rain event features in detail. The radar–rain gauge correlation decreases considerably when the time resolution increases (r from 0.69 to 0.31, time resolution from 1 to 60 min). No significant difference was found in the rain total volume (3%) calculated with the three spatial resolution data. A spatial resolution of 0.5 km on radar imagery is suitable to quantify rainfall in the Andes Mountains. This study improves knowledge on rainfall spatial distribution in the Ecuadorian Andes, and it will be the basis for future hydrometeorological studies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1191-1223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Schreffler

AbstractIn 1556, Giovanni Battista Ramusio facilitated the publication in Venice of a report by Pedro Sancho, official secretary to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Sancho’s text included a lengthy description of the architecture and plan of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, and was the first such description to appear in print. Previous scholarship has used it as a primary source for reconstructing the appearance of Inca Cuzco as seen by Sancho, Pizarro, and their cohort at the moment of their arrival there in 1533. The text, however, is also evidence for other kinds of historical information, for it demonstrates how habits of description engaged in the production of space. The impact of Sancho’s textual representation of Cuzco is evident in a contemporary reaction to it — a woodcut print that accompanied it when it was first published. Considered together, the text and image lay bare the ways in which modes of representation facilitated political, architectural, and urbanistic change in the sixteenth-century New World.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Pirie ◽  
Paul J. M. Maas ◽  
Rutger A. Wilschut ◽  
Heleen Melchers-Sharrott ◽  
Lars W. Chatrou

AbstractThis preprint has been reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Evolutionary Biology (http://dx.doi.org/10.24072/pci.evolbiol.100033). Much of the immense present day biological diversity of Neotropical rainforests originated from the Miocene onwards, a period of geological and ecological upheaval in South America. We assess the impact of the Andean orogeny, drainage of lake Pebas, and closure of the Panama Isthmus on two clades of trees (Cremastosperma, c. 31 spp.; and Mosannona, c. 14 spp.; both Annonaceae) found in humid forest distributed across the transition zones between the Andes and Western (lowland) Amazonia and between Central and South America. We inferred phylogenies based on c. 80% of recognised species of each clade using plastid and nuclear encoded sequence markers, revealing similar patterns of geographically restricted clades. Using molecular dating we showed that diversifications in the different areas occurred in parallel, with timing consistent with Andean vicariance and Central American geodispersal. In apparent contradiction of high dispersal abilities of rainforest trees, Cremastosperma clades within Amazonia are also geographically restricted, with a southern/montane clade that appears to have diversified along the foothills of the Andes sister to one of more northern/lowland species that diversified in a region once inundated by lake Pebas. Ecological niche modelling approaches show phylogenetically conserved niche differentiation, particularly within Cremastosperma. Niche similarity and recent common ancestry of Amazon and Guianan Mosannona species contrasts with dissimilar niches and more distant ancestry of Amazon, Venezuelan and Guianan species of Cremastosperma suggesting that this element of the similar patterns of disjunct distributions in the two genera is instead a biogeographic parallelism, with differing origins. The results provide further independent evidence for the importance of the Andean orogeny, the drainage of Lake Pebas, and the formation of links between South and Central America in the evolutionary history of Neotropical lowland rainforest trees.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Aschero ◽  
Agustina Barros ◽  
Lorena Bonjour ◽  
Ana Mazzolari ◽  
Martín Pérez Sosa ◽  
...  

Abstract While the role of environmental filters, usually described by elevation as proxy, and anthropogenic disturbance as drivers of non-native plant diversity and abundance in mountains have been extensively studied, the impact of herbivores are less explored. Livestock grazing can facilitate the introduction of non-native species by seed dispersal and reduce biotic resistance due to consumption and trampling of native plants, even in the highest protected areas in the Andes. We here explored the effects of elevation, livestock and distance to the road on non-native and native plant distributions. Our results confirm the largely negative relationship of non-native plant richness and cover with elevation, with a peak in richness and cover at low to intermediate elevations. Similarly, we show a strong decline in non-native richness with increasing distance to the road, especially at low elevations, accompanied by a strong negative effect of roads on native species richness. Most importantly, however, we show that the presence of non-native herbivores greatly increases the cover of non-native species away from the roadside, identifying herbivore disturbance as a potential catalyst of non-native plant invasion into natural vegetation of high-Andean protected areas. Our results confirm the often-shown role of disturbance as driver of plant invasions in mountains, yet highlight the interactive effects of disturbance by roads and herbivory: roads funnel non-native species towards higher elevations, while non-native herbivores can promote non-native plant success away from the roadside and into the natural vegetation. Hence, regulating soil and non-native herbivory disturbance is important for minimizing plant invasions at high elevation in the Arid Andes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA WOYNARSKI ◽  
ADELINA ONG ◽  
TANJA BEER ◽  
STEPHANIE BEAUPARK ◽  
JONAH WINN-LENETSKY ◽  
...  

This dossier opens up a set of questions about what theatre and performance can do and be in a climate-changed future. Through a series of practice snapshots the authors suggest a diversity of responses to decolonizing and environmental justice issues in and through theatre and performance. These practices include the climate-fiction film The Wandering Earth, which prompts questions about what decolonizing means for China and the impact of climate chaos on the mental well-being of young people; The Living Pavilion, an Australian Indigenous-led project that created a biodiverse event space showcasing Indigenous art making; Dancing Earth Indigenous dance company who use dance as a way to engage Indigenous ecological thinking and Indigenous futurity; water rituals in the Andes of Peru that problematize water policy and ethnic boundaries.


1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kees De Meer ◽  
Roland Bergman ◽  
John S. Kusner ◽  
Willem H. P. Den Brinker

The impact of child deaths on the nutrition status of surviving children in the Lake Titicaca basin in the Andes of southern Peru (altitude>3,800 m) is explored. Survey data on obstetric history and social variables were collected in a random sample of 86 households in two Aymara and three Quechua Amerindian peasant communities. Independently of social factors, deaths among older siblings under five years old were associated with improved nutrition stature in children under four. Improved head circumference for age in boys was associated with the death of an older sister. The findings point to a new hypothesis concerning nutrition status in this population: mortality in children under five can be related to improved nutrition status (as evidenced by head circumference and height) in surviving siblings under four.


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