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Dynamics of Andean Treeline Ecotones: Between Cloud Forest and Páramo Geocritical Tropes

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The Andean Cloud Forest

Abstract

In the new critical biogeography framework, Cloud Forests are conceived as scalar artifacts of both, historicity’s (c.f. temporal) and spatiality’s (c.f. areal) interdigitations of the socio-ecological production mountainscapes. Particularly in the tropical Andes, where the greatest concentration of Tropical Montane Cloud Forest (TMCF) ecosystems exists, most of the research endeavor has been devoted to spatio-temporal “landscape characterization” of many functional traits or ecological niches available along the verdant gradient (see Chap. 1), and to create a “sense of place” that could make them unique; they persist at present appealing to the eye and to the mind. Because of my affinity with the neotropical realm, I include most examples or case studies from the tropical and subtropical Andes, yet extreme cases of cloud forests can be pointed from the Patagonian or even the Magallanic Andes of the Terra Australis, where the mystical fog shrouding is as spectacular as in the Andean crescent. When possible, I use vernacular descriptors of pueblos originarios to describe the terms used regionally for the cloud forest ecosystem, wherever they might be located.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Fausto O. Sarmiento PhD

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  1. Fausto O. Sarmiento PhD
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Correspondence to Fausto O. Sarmiento PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City, OK, USA

    Randall W. Myster

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Sarmiento, F.O. (2021). Dynamics of Andean Treeline Ecotones: Between Cloud Forest and Páramo Geocritical Tropes. In: Myster, R.W. (eds) The Andean Cloud Forest. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57344-7_2

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