Kosnipata

The Kosñipata Valley, Manu National Park, hosts the biggest carbon cycling analysis on an elevational transect to date.

The slopes of the eastern Andes harbour the most dynamic and ecologically diverse ecosystems in South America, with some of the greatest biodiversity on earth and a high proportion of endemic species.

Tropical montane forests (TMF) are amongst the most fascinating yet least studied of terrestrial ecosystems. They combine some of the attributes of temperate forests (low mean annual temperature) with those of lowland tropical forests (lack of temperature seasonality), and thereby present an unexplored frontier and important test of our understanding of climatic controls on ecosystem carbon cycling.

Andes Biodiversity Ecosystems Research Group [darwin.winston.wfu.edu/andes/], lead by Y. Malhi, P. Meir, M. Silman, M. New and Y. A. Teh established a number of permanent plots in the Kosñipata Valley, along the Trocha Union (3500–1855 m), Wayquecha (3025 m) and San Pedro (1500 – 1800 m), as well as two plots in the Tono valley (1000 – 1500 m). The transect extends to lowland Amazonia, where two one hectare permanent plots were established in 2004 by Aragão et al. in the Tambopata biosphere reserve (194 - 210 m).