Ana Ochoa-Sánchez

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Verified

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• PhD in Water Resources
• Professor (Associate) at University of Azuay

Mountain regions are among the most sensitive and vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. In this study, we systematically assess the observed impacts of climate change in the Andes and use expert review and model-based methods to identify the role of anthropogenic climate change. Impact detection and attribution assessments showed that anthrop...

Background Global warming and climate change are threats to the world. Warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns alter water availability and increase the occurrence of extreme weather events. South America and the Andes are vulnerable regions to climate change due to inequity and the uneven distribution of resources. Climate change...

Interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary to achieve sustainable management of natural resources. However, research is still often developed in an exclusively disciplinary manner, hampering the capacity to holistically address environmental issues. This study focuses on páramo, a group of high-elevation ecosystems situated around ∼3000 to ∼5000 m a....

Essential climate variables (ECVs) have been recognized as crucial information for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is an agreement on 54 ECVs to understand climate evolution, and multiple rely on satellite Earth observation (abbreviated as s-ECVs). Despite the efforts to encourage s-ECV use for SDGs, there is still a need to f...

Interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary to achieve sustainable management of natural resources. However, research is still often developed in an exclusively disciplinary manner, hampering the capacity to holistically address environmental issues. This study focuses on páramo, a group of high-elevation ecosystems situated around ∼3000 to ∼5000 m a....

Epidemics are complex dynamical processes that are difficult to model. As revealed by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the social behavior and policy decisions contribute to the rapidly changing behavior of the virus' spread during outbreaks and recessions. In practice, reliable forecasting estimations are needed, especially during early contagion stages w...

Páramos are particular ecosystems of the Tropical Andes, where fog and low-intensity rainfall such as drizzle are commonly frequent—but the contribution of these water sources to soil water replenishment and discharge is not yet clear, mainly because the development of techniques for separating fog from drizzle and wind-driven rainfall has been cha...

Mountains are highly significant regions in the context of climate change and sustainable development, at the intersection of accelerated warming and a large population depending directly or indirectly on them. They are regions of high biological and cultural diversity and provide vital goods and services to people living in and around mountain reg...

Text: The páramo biome provides key ecosystem services in the Andes. Water resources from the páramo are used for drinking water, irrigation, hydropower generation and for sustaining aquatic ecosystems. Notwithstanding mountainous terrains place di culties for their study, due to its remoteness and data scarcity, knowledge about the functioning of...

Páramos, a neotropical alpine grassland‐peatland biome of the northern Andes and Central America, play an essential role in regional and global cycles of water, carbon, and nutrients. They act as water towers, delivering water and ecosystem services from the high mountains down to the Pacific, Caribbean, and Amazon regions. Páramos are also widely...

The study of the environmental factors that control evapotranspiration and the components of evapotranspiration leads to a better understanding of the actual evapotranspiration (ET) process that links the functioning of the soil, water and atmosphere. It also improves local, regional and global ET modelling. Globally, few studies so far focussed on...

Interest in atmosphere-surface flux modeling over the mountainous regions of the globe has increased recently, with a major focus on the prediction of water, carbon and other functional indicators in natural and disturbed conditions. However, less research has been centered on exploring energy fluxes (net radiation; sensible, latent and soil heat)...

The páramo biome provides water resources for many cities in the Andes. These resources are used for drinking water, irrigation, hydropower generation and for sustaining aquatic ecosystems. Notwithstanding mountainous terrains place difficulties for their study, due to its remoteness and data scarcity, knowledge about the functioning of this biome...

At the Andean region, the páramo biome (located above 3200 m a.s.l.) provides water resources for many cities and communities along Central and South America. These resources are used for drinking water, agriculture, hydropower generation and for sustaining aquatic ecosystems. Although mountainous terrains place difficulties for their study, due to...

Land use impacts on soil water content (SWC) are scarcely studied in mountain humid ecosystems, such as the Andean páramos, despite its influence on ecohydrological processes. Our objective was to analyze the impacts of extensive grazing on SWC of an Andean páramo hillslope with native tussock grasses. Along two parallel transects in a hillslope, w...

The study of land surface-atmosphere flux exchanges for mountainous regions has increased in the last decade. However, the prediction of water losses and energy fluxes in natural and disturbed environments of highland biomes is still unexplored. This is the case of the Neotropical Andean biome of the páramo, where this lack of research is noticeabl...

The páramo ecosystem provides most of the water for the tropical Andean highlands in South America. Thus, the proper closure of the water balance in this environment is of outmost importance. Although actual evapotranspi-ration (ETa) is a key component of the water balance, it has not been properly assessed at the páramo. ETa has been recently meas...

Actual evapotranspiration (ETa) explains the exchange of water and energy between soil, land surface, and atmosphere. Despite its importance, it remains difficult to measure directly. Grasslands represent a widespread ecosystem for which further assessment of the measurement and estimation of ETa is needed. Thus, the objective of this study was to...

Floods represent a severe cause of deaths and economic loss. In order to prevent, mitigate, and reduce flood risks and their consequences, hydraulic models allow analysing and mapping floods. The results of an appropriate model that works under local conditions are a valuable tool for local governments leading to sustainable management of floodplai...

The páramo ecosystem provides most of the water for the tropical Andean highlands in South America. While the comprehension of this environment has increased lately, there remains an urgent need to quantify the processes involved in the hydrological cycle. Interception loss (IL) is one of the least studied processes in the páramo, and more generall...

The downscaling of global climate models (GCMs) aims at incorporating finer scale information to their horizontal resolution in order to represent regional and local processes better. There are two main approaches to downscaling: statistical (based on data relationships between synoptic atmospheric variables and observations of local variables) and...

The Pacific–Andean region in western South America suffers from rainfall data scarcity, as is the case for many regions in the South. An important research question is whether the latest satellite-based and numerical weather prediction (NWP) model outputs capture well the temporal and spatial patterns of rainfall over the region, and hence have the...

An important issue for the Pacific-Andean basin in western South-America is whether the latest satellite-based and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model outputs, provide the potential to compensate data scarcity. Based on a comprehensive dataset of ground precipitation, the performance of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42V7 and...