Shaping an inter- and transdisciplinary research agenda on land use under climate change in the highly dynamic northern Ecuadorian Andes

Global climate change, resource depletion, and land use change require local solutions that acknowledge the configuration and history of its landscapes and the related social-ecological processes. Particularly sensitive to climate change are high-mountain tropical regions. The Andes, where Ecuador’s capital Quito is home to c. 3 million people, host globally-important biodiversity hotspots, organic rich soils and water storage capacity of utmost importance for rural and urban areas.

We would like to present 1) how we co-designed an inter- and transdisciplinary research agenda on land use and landscape dynamics under global and local change that considers local knowledge and landscape evolution, and 2) what challenges we identified to make this research happen. With researchers from Ecuador, Germany, and Poland and members of NGOs and local communities we explored future study areas and the most pressing subtopics in a region of active geodynamics (volcanism, earthquakes) and highly sensitive to climatic extremes that co-drive Earth surface processes (e.g., soil erosion, vegetation fires). We discussed about “landscape” as a potential conceptual framework and about decolonial methodologies on “how to research together”. We furthermore explored lakes as sedimentary archives of past landscape dynamics, as well as current ecosystem functioning using vegetation surveys, state-of-the-art remote sensing and field mapping. Overall, we recognize high potential to co-create actionable knowledge that addresses the interconnectedness between societal and natural systems, and to contribute to tackling ongoing and future land use challenges in the tropical Andes.

Details

Author

Elisabeth* Dietze1, Ann-Kathrin Volmer2, Alejandra Valdes-Uribe3, Liseth Pérez4, Michał Słowinski5, Elizabeth Velarde6, Jessica Budds2, Natalia Carpintero7, Andrea Carrión8, Lisa Feist1, Agnieszka Halaś5, Volker Karius9, Carlos Larrea-Maldonaldo10, Maria-Fernanda López-Sandoval8, Patricio Lopez11, Melany Ruíz-Urigüen7, Stephen Sherwood12, Rosa Linda Tapia11, Marek Więckowski5, Leo Zurita-Arthos13, Ana Mariscal-Chavez11

Institutionen

1Department of Physical Geography, University Göttingen, Germany; 2Development Geography, University Bonn, Germany; 3Tropical Silviculture and Ecology, University Göttingen, Germany; 4Organic Biogeochemistry in Geosystems, RWTH Aachen, now at Institute of Geosciences, Kiel University; 5Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland; 6LABINAM, Universidad Tecnica del Norte, Ibarra, Ecuador; 7Environmental Sciences Core Lab, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador; 8Dep. of Economy, Environment and Territory, FLACSO, Ecuador; 9Department of Sedimentology and Environmental Geology, University Göttingen, Germany; 10Environment and Sustainability, Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Quito, Ecuador; 11Fundación Cambugán, Quito, Ecuador; 12Fundación EkoRural, Quito, Ecuador; 13Geocentro, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador

Veranstaltung

Geo4Göttingen 2025

Datum

2025

DOI

10.48380/hh7m-x456

Geolocation

South America

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