Andean forests that were believed to be virgins reveal years of human exploitation – La República CE

Cloud forests of the Andes Ecuadorian the most biodiverse and most endangered environments of the Earth and now a new international study that reconstructs the last thousand years of human impact in this region of the planet indicates that indigenous peoples have exploited the land intensively

. This is one of the key findings of a study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution that sheds new light on the resilience of highly biodiverse ecosystems after the war. undergo a prolonged human modification.

According to its authors, led by Nicholas Loughling, of the Rein Open University in the United Kingdom, and with Spanish participation, nineteenth-century explorers visiting the equatorial Andean cloud forests had the greatest impact on their lives. used to refer to these environments as primitive "nature".

However, what they observed was actually an area that had been intensely cultivated and deforested by indigenous people for hundreds of years, reports in a note the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC ).

Encarni Montoya, paleoecologist of the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera, CSIC He explained that the work reconstructs the last 1000 years of the human impact on the cloud forests of the valley Quijos, a vital trade route between the Inca Empire and the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region.

The Valley, he adds the Spanish expeditions of 1538 to enter the Amazon in search of gold, silver and cinnamon; "Despite its historical significance, there are hardly any such works in the area."

In particular, researchers extracted and determined the age of sediments from the bottom of Lake Huila: through the badysis of fossil pollen preserved in the sediments were able to reconstruct the characteristics of the existing landscape as well as the human practices that have developed in the region over the past 1,000 years.

Before the arrival of European colonizers, indigenous peoples cultivated and managed the land intensively. and, according to the lacustrine registers badyzed, the intensive use of the land abruptly ended around 1588 due to the mbadive tithe of the indigenous peoples as a result of the European invasion.

"The cloud forest took about 130 years to recover and return to a form and structure equivalent to those of the forests before the arrival of humans on the mainland" summarizes Loughlin

Montoya notes that "explorers who described a virgin nature in the nineteenth century were, unknowingly, observing a secondary forest influenced by centuries of human activity. It's the abandonment of the area following the European invasion that led to an unknown ecological recovery. "

According to this scientist, to conserve and restore these forests, it is essential to know how they work and to understand their history … EFE