17 April 2015

Into the Forest

In which we visit cloud forests and rainforests, and navigate the slippery and difficult terrain of development, conservation, and the battle between resource extraction and native rights, in two parts.

Part I. Down the Eastern Slope of the Andes

From the páramo, we wended our way down into cloud forest, on twisting roads through peering overhangs. Rest stops and human habitation are explosions of color in the calm misted green of the mountain slopes.



Here in the cloud forest, mosses, lianas, bromeliads and other epiphytes (plants that grow high up on tree branches and other plants, away from the soil) drip and dangle amid the mists that penetrate the forest. These epiphytic plants gain a significant portion of their water from the air, via clouds that hang heavy over the forest for a part of each day. Epiphytes gain their nutrients from plant matter that falls and gathers in crevices of tree branches - by living high in trees they can access sunlight with less competition than their downstairs neighbors on the forest floor. The cloud forest is a calmer version of the lowland tropical rain forest: its plants are governed by the same limitations of sunlight and nutrients that fuel that competitive race to the canopy, but its cooler temperatures and cloudy days seem to make everything happen at a slower pace.


This cloud forest, nestled into the eastern slope of the Andes in the upper reaches of the great Amazonian watershed, recalled me to the cloud forest of Costa Rica where I worked. That one sat high on the Pacific slope of the cordillera de Talamanca under the shadow of Chirripó Peak. The same mist settling over the same moss-draped trees; the same tanagers darting out for insects as the afternoon rains pause and peter out; the same iron-red soils. But a different horizon, different species peeking out amidst the jumble, a different smell.

We spent only an afternoon, a night, and a dawn in this cloud forest, at the Yanayacu Biological Station. A brief stop between the soaring Andes and the sweeping Amazonian basin, this pause gave us a glimpse into the transition point between two wildly distinct ecosystems: páramo and rainforest. And then, from this moment of calm in the cloud forest, we plunged onwards and downwards... in Part II: Into the Tropical Rainforest.

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