It’s not easy being a botanist. Madidi National Park is home to 11% of the world’s bird species and an estimated 12,000 plant species. Located in northwestern Bolivia, it is one of the largest, most diverse protected areas on the planet, on par with Madagascar’s national parks and Colombia’s Chocó jungle. It is also remarkably untouched. Aside from the handful of communities living inside the park and limited ecotourism on its eastern edge, human activity is scarce in the area. “Madidi is exceptional for scientific study”, says Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the main sponsor of ongoing studies here, “because of this lack of disturbance”. For biodiversity researchers, it has another attribute: the longest continuous elevation gradient on the planet. The park ranges from Andean with peaks of just over 6000 meters above sea level to the Amazon basin, approximately 180 meters above sea level.
That said, and although it is not easy being a botanist, a handful of brave have defied the difficulties imposed by the wild Madidi. Most of them belong to the Madidi Project, a long-term study of plant biodiversity in the Bolivian Andes. The main goals of the project are to:
(1) Describe and document the flora of the Madidi region (in and around the Madidi National Park).
(2) Study the structure and dynamics of plant species distributions and communities.
(3) Generate local infrastructure and capacity that advances the careers of Bolivian students and researchers.
The Madidi Project is a multi-institutional project lead by Missouri Botanical Garden, with the collaboration of the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The project commenced in 2001, and has run uninterrupted since then, building an exceptional infrastructure to carry out research in tropical forests. The data collected by the project are unparalleled in the tropical Andes, and provide a detailed knowledge about the distribution of species and biodiversity in the region.
For my research I have focused so far on the dataset of >400 temporary 0.1-ha plots. These have been inventoried following a standardized protocol (you can find here a summary of the method: English version / Spanish version). Feel free to contact us if you plant to employ this method and are interested in data-sharing or meta-analyses.
(1) Describe and document the flora of the Madidi region (in and around the Madidi National Park).
(2) Study the structure and dynamics of plant species distributions and communities.
(3) Generate local infrastructure and capacity that advances the careers of Bolivian students and researchers.
The Madidi Project is a multi-institutional project lead by Missouri Botanical Garden, with the collaboration of the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The project commenced in 2001, and has run uninterrupted since then, building an exceptional infrastructure to carry out research in tropical forests. The data collected by the project are unparalleled in the tropical Andes, and provide a detailed knowledge about the distribution of species and biodiversity in the region.
For my research I have focused so far on the dataset of >400 temporary 0.1-ha plots. These have been inventoried following a standardized protocol (you can find here a summary of the method: English version / Spanish version). Feel free to contact us if you plant to employ this method and are interested in data-sharing or meta-analyses.