Ecuador

Project: Vegetation, Regeneration and Succession Processes, Use-Potential and Conservation of Tropical Mountain Forests in Southern Ecuador

Lead Researchers:

Dr. Rainer W. Bussmann, Head and Curator for Economic Botany, William L. Brown Center for Plant Genetic Resources

Pablo Lozano, Universität Hohenheim, Germany

Floristic approaches to study and describe tropical vegetation types are complicated by the extreme species diversity of the region, very complex vegetation mosaics and logistic as well as taxonomic problems and time constraints. Detailed inventories require long-term studies, as many infertile species are encountered during single short-term visits. For these reasons the number of vegetation studies is very limited especially in the Neotropics, and only very few sites are more or less floristically known. The largest constraint for phytosociological studies in tropical lowland forests is the low population density of many species, which makes it very difficult to cope with minimum area requirements. This problem however does not occur in highland forests. The extreme steepness of the terrain, particularly in the Andes, leads to an astonishing habitat diversity, which allows to clearly distinguish small homogenous forest vegetation types. Until recently, these tropical montane forests - despite their ecological and economic importance as water catchments and erosion barriers - have received only marginal attention in science and society. Moreover, most studies carried out in tropical mountain ecosystems concentrated mainly on the alpine zone, whereas the often-inaccessible forest belt with its extreme species richness has hardly been studied. The Andean zone makes no exception. Even broad-focused projects included the forest regions only marginally. The few publications concerning the mountain forest vegetation of Ecuador mainly contain species lists, or mention the montane region in brief comparison with the forests of the Amazon basin. First attempts to assemble the existing frugal knowledge were made only recently. The deficit of scientific knowledge particularly includes all aspects of regeneration of montane forests, as well as succession processes after any kind of natural or man-made impact. The habitat requirements and the potential for rejuvenation of important tree species are almost unknown.

Until the recent past, the Podocarpus National Park and the study area have been almost unknown scientifically. The intention of these investigations is to characterize the different forest types and their regeneration stages along ecological gradients.