Impactos del cambio climático en la biodiversidad de los Andes tropicales: Riesgo climático, vulnerabilidad y herramientas de toma de decisiones para la planificación de la conservación

This report describes the methodologies used to assess climate risk and vulnerability in the tropical Andes, combining dendrochronology, hydrometeorological networks, in-situ sensors, and global circulation models to create climate change scenarios for conservation planning.

• Because historical hydrometeorological records in the tropical Andes are generally too short to analyze long-term climate change trends, the project used classical dendrochronology (tree-ring analysis) to reconstruct past climate conditions for periods of 100 to 200 years. This involved selecting key tree species from páramo, High-Andean forest, and upper cloud forest environments, specifically using Weinmannia cochensis and Ocotea sericea in the northern Ecuadorian Andes, and Polylepis pepei and Pseudolmedia rigida in the border region between Bolivia and Peru.
• To address issues of continuity and quality in existing hydrometeorological data, the project applied statistical tools to detect anomalies and abrupt changes, and used the RClimdex package to generate temperature indices (such as extremes, percentiles, and warm/cold days/nights) and precipitation indices (including extreme events, dry/rainy day counts, and intensity).
• The project increased the density of monitoring networks by installing digital sensors for hourly temperature, humidity, and dew point records. These sensors were placed at approximately 500-meter altitudinal intervals across gradients of 4,500 meters to calculate local temperature changes with height and characterize dry, semi-dry, and saturated ecosystems.
• Future climate conditions were estimated using global circulation models (GCMs) and reanalysis data (NOAA NCEP-DOE Reanalysis-2). Historical simulations covered the period from 1950 to the present across the Andes. Future projections focused on short-term (2011-2030) and medium-term (2045-2065) horizons, utilizing models including ECHAM4.5, GFDL, CCM3v6, MRI, NCAR:CCSM3, NCAR:CCSM3 COLA T63, MPIM:ECHAM5, GFDL_CM2, and NASA:GISS-AOM, with altitudinal corrections to account for the region's complex orography.
• The project integrated tree-ring chronologies, long-term climate indices, GCM simulations, reanalysis data, and local altitudinal temperature/humidity records to develop short- and medium-term scenarios for the climate change exposure module of the NatureServe vulnerability index.

APA

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (n.d.). Impactos del cambio climático en la biodiversidad de los Andes tropicales: Riesgo climático, vulnerabilidad y herramientas de toma de decisiones para la planificación de la conservación. https://iai.int/admin/site/sites/default/files/uploads/Site-1_Clima.pdf

Chicago

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Impactos del cambio climático en la biodiversidad de los Andes tropicales: Riesgo climático, vulnerabilidad y herramientas de toma de decisiones para la planificación de la conservación. n.d. https://iai.int/admin/site/sites/default/files/uploads/Site-1_Clima.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |title=Impactos del cambio climático en la biodiversidad de los Andes tropicales: Riesgo climático, vulnerabilidad y herramientas de toma de decisiones para la planificación de la conservación |url=https://iai.int/admin/site/sites/default/files/uploads/Site-1_Clima.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{interamericaninstituteforglobalchangeresearchndimpactos, author = {{Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}}, title = {{Impactos del cambio climático en la biodiversidad de los Andes tropicales: Riesgo climático, vulnerabilidad y herramientas de toma de decisiones para la planificación de la conservación}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, url = {https://iai.int/admin/site/sites/default/files/uploads/Site-1_Clima.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }