Fausto Sarmiento

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at University of Georgia

The book Andean Flanks is written in Spanish for the Latin American audience interested in capturing the state-of-the-art of pealeoecology, biogeography and political ecology of the Andean cloud forest belt on both sides of the divide.

The #IMC will take place from September 14 – 18 2025 in Innsbruck, Austria. #IMC builds upon the previous mountain conferences and aims to continue this scientific conference series exclusively targeted towards mountain-research. Hosted in the Alps, #IMC provides an excellent opportunity for experts from different disciplines to discuss mountain-re...

Th is book is the second volume in a series on montology dedicated to the transdisciplinary refl ection of mountain research, considering the diversity of views on mountains and their problemata in the context of rapid technological development and unprecedented accumulation and dissemination of information around the world. Th e necessity for a ne...

The Chilean palm (Jubaea chilensis) is an endangered and culturally important species from central Chile. We studied the Ocoa palm landscape (OPL), which is currently part of a protected area that harbors the largest Chilean palm population where local peasant practices have been excluded and conflict with biodiversity conservation strategies. We e...

Current decolonial scholarship emphasizes biocultural memory as well as sentient features to describe the actual mountainscape, including bodily metaphors based on the semiotics of geoecological and socioecological processes claiming gender identity to mountains. In searching for the pourquoi story of mountains, we aim to dissect the place naming g...

Despite the tense geopolitical situation in 2024, authors from different mountain regions of the world joined the discussion of a transcendental importance to align the development of montology and to reaffirm the novel approaches to understand mountainscapes. We attempted to connect traditional and innovative approaches in reviewing terminological...

The importance of mountain cognition is highlighted from ontological, semiotic, and epistemic angles, based on the affirmation of scientific terminology that is currently utilized in the training of mountain geographers and other professionals dealing with mountainscape research and development. We offer a view of the standards used in traditional...

This book is the second volume in a series on montology dedicated to the transdisciplinary reflection of mountain research, considering the diversity of views on mountains and their problemata in the context of rapid technological development and unprecedented accumulation and dissemination of information around the world. The necessity for a new o...

There is consensus to advance science with unorthodox narratives generated with new discoveries, different perspectives, or challenging innovation altogether. However, it is also consensual that these mountain narratives, like the waves in fluid water or air, move along the time scales with different dynamics and distinctive rhythms, generating a s...

To document the dynamics of biocultural heritage, we studied traditional uses of plants on a segment of the Andean Road System, or Qhapaq Ñan, within the central Andes of Ecuador, home of the Kichwa community of Nizag. Here, residents preserved a rich diversity of plants within their agricultural fields, or chakra, of the Andean landscapes, upholdi...

This paper offers paradigmatic insights from an international workshop on Ecological Legacies: Bridge Between Science and Community, in Ecuador, in the summer of 2023. The conference brought together foreign and local scholars, tour operators, village community, and Indigenous leaders in the upper Amazonia region of Ecuador with the goal of develop...

Addressing the shocks of global crises requires that scientists, policymakers, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities work together to enable communities to withstand and adapt to disturbances. On the basis of our experiences in the Andes, we propose the ‘10-step cycle of transdisciplinarity’ for designing projects to build social-ecological...

Edwin Bernbaum, Sacred Mountains of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed, 2022), 411 pp., $29.99 (pbk), ISBN:9781108-8334742.

La utilización de los estudios de montaña requiere de narrativas integradoras para la geoalfabetización sobre paisajes socioecológicos productivos y motiva más investigaciones transdisciplinares en el campo de la montología. Concebimos este artículo como la confluencia de la experiencia individual y el razonamiento colectivo hacia la formación de g...

The importance of the Neotropics to the world's climate, biogeochemical cycling and biodiversity cannot be questioned. This book suggests that gradients are key to understanding both these issues and Neotropical ecosystem structure, function and dynamics in general. Those gradients are either spatial, temporal or spatio-temporal, where many tempora...

There is consensus to advance science with unorthodox narratives generated with new discoveries, different perspectives, or challenging innovation altogether. However, it is also consensual that these mountain narratives, like the waves in fluid water or air, move along the time scales with different dynamics and distinctive rhythms, generating a s...

The Pambamarca fortress complex in northern Ecuador is a cultural and built heritage with 18 prehispanic fortresses known as Pucaras. They are mostly located on the ridge of the Pambamarca volcano, which is severely affected by erosion. In this research, we implemented a multiscale methodology to identify sheet, rill and gully erosion in the contex...

This book introduces an innovative approach to sustainable and regenerative mountain development. Transdisciplinary to biophysical and biocultural scales, it provides answers to the "what, when, how, why, and where" that researchers question on mountains, including the most challenging: So What! Forwarding thinking in its treatment of core subjects...

RESUMEN: La Reserva Comunitaria de Uchucay mantiene un importante relicto de bosque nativo interandino, parte de la Mancomunidad El Collay de Vegetación y Bosque Protector en el austro ecuatoriano, que ha sido conser-vado por su relevancia en la provisión del caudal hídrico, pero del que se conocía poco en cuanto a su biodiversidad. Mediante transe...

The decolonial turn of scholarly activities experienced recently in the Global South requires re-writing of concepts and ideas that were considered dogmatic in western science, but that changed now due to novel insights provided by indigenous and traditional ecological knowledges. So, as in many geographic inquiries, the search for transgressive di...

The development of montology as the convergent science of mountains requires paradigmatic shifts and clear lexicon that identifies this transdisciplinary approach. Also the identification of the sources for standard use of concepts and nuanced meanings of technical terms is important. One such about-face of ecological theory relates to terminology...

A novel understanding of mountain science is afforded with an innovative approach of the convergent, transdisciplinary mountain science. Unlike past understandings of the physical environment influenced by altitude and harsh meteorological conditions, montological approaches incorporate social dimensions to understand mountains as socioecological p...

The interdependence of biological and cultural diversity is exemplified by the new conservation paradigm of biocultural heritage. We seek to clarify obsolescent notions of nature, whereby cultural construction and identity markers of mountain communities need to reflect localized, situated, and nuanced understanding about mountainscapes as they are...

Abrupt changes in land use/land cover have often characterized Andean rural landscapes. This is particularly notorious in the Paute River watershed in southern Ecuador. We seek to show how, under tenets of the global economy, rural mountain landscapes suffer constant modifications due to the agricultural practices of dwellers and migrants. Erosion...

In recent years, social media has been widely utilized to identify cultural ecosystem services (CES) that encapsulate place-dependent non-material values, yet related studies remained in expert-based and single-word lexicons to retrieve such values. Taking online tourism reviews from TripAdvisor and Google Maps for El Cajas National Park in Ecuador...

Analizamos el predicamento del desarrollo sustentable y regenerativo enmarcado en la experiencia globalizante del cambio global, con la gran aceleración de las últimas décadas. Con el fin de plantear opciones prácticas de adaptación al cambio climático y de incrementar la resiliencia, se presenta el caso del Chimborazo como referente global para in...

This chapter synthesizes major findings from the eleven case studies presented in the previous chapters, offering policy recommendations arising from the synthesis. It distills key messages to address questions on the following issues: (1) how to conceptualize the nexus between biodiversity, health, and sustainable development in the context of SEP...

Forest transformation modified the Quijos’ ancient mountainscapes in three ways: scientific approximation, entrepreneurial investing, and community engagement. We concentrate the study in the Cumandá Protected Forest reserve as exemplar in the Quijos valley. Our objective is to understand forest transition trends and prospects of sustainability by...

Las Áreas de Conservación Privada (ACP) son uno de los mecanismos de conservación, gestionadas por ciudadanos privados que más protagonismo han adquirido en los escenarios de conservación local en los últimos años. En este estudio evaluamos la efectividad de cuatro ACP gestionadas por comunidades locales (CC). Se aplicó el Índice de Efectividad Com...

Montology, the transdisciplinary science of mountains, applied to education incorporates several pedagogical approaches that could be used to energize the transformative change from sustainable to regenerative development from different perspectives. We include pedagogies with learning outcomes that apply 9 different educational methodologies, and...

The book contains a nuanced analysis of socioecological issues of montane forests from past plant diversity, climate change and mountain conservation, after the final International meeting of the VULPES project (Belmont Forum) in Ecuador. It is pubished by the Institute for Cloud Forest Research and Sustainable Development (INDES-CES) at the Nation...

Abrupt changes in land use/land cover have often characterized Andean rural landscapes. This is particularly notorious in the Paute River watershed in southern Ecuador. We seek to show how, under tenets of the global economy, rural mountain landscapes suffer constant modifications due to the agricultural practices of dwellers and migrants. Erosion...

Los Flancos Andinos son espacios constituídos por sistemas de montañas que se encuentran en la parte occiedental y oriental de las cordilleras altoandinas. Se caracterizan por pisos altitudinales y alguna exclusivas zonas de vida que contemplan ecosistemas diversos y característica propias que van cambiando paulatinamente conforme van acercándose h...

The development of Montology as the convergent science of mountains requires paradigm shifts. One such about-face of ecological theory relates to terminology usage in biodiversity conservation; the trend is identified with new understandings about biocultural diversity, driven by both intangible heritage maintained in the tropical Andes, and the re...

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 e...

The 34th International Geographical Congress was held online from 16 to 20 August 2021. Its main themes were strengthening our collective response to global problems and building bridges between continents. The International Geographical Union Commission of Mountain Studies (IGU-CMS) organized an International Symposium of Moun-tain Studies (Istanb...

A brief historical perspective and review of anthropology on Peru's eastern Andean slopes by the first author. Editorial assistance by second author.

ontology, the transdisciplinary science of mountains, applied to education incorporates several pedagogical approaches that could be used to energize the transformative change from sustainable to regenerative development from different perspectives. We include pedagogies with learning outcomes that apply 9 different educational methodologies, and w...

Mountain landscapes provide a variety of cultural ecosystem services (CES), but recent developments such as land-use and climate changes, population growth or urbanization seem to lead more frequently to conflicts among users or restrict the use of natural resources. An enhanced understanding of such conflicts and limitations may improve decision-m...

Mountains as archetype frame some meta-geographies of the vertical dimension. Mountain metaphors, thus, have remained as key guidance in developing not only animistic belief systems and religious cults, but also military strategies, economic potential, and scientific innovation. This paper seeks to explain the need to integrate western knowledge, w...

Forest and land degradation is a serious problem worldwide and the Peruvian National Map of Degraded Areas indicates that 13.78% (177,592.82 km2) of the country’s territory is degraded. Forest plantations can be a restoration strategy, while conserving economically important species affected by climate change and providing forestry material for mar...

We seek to highlight how paleoecology, archaeology, and geoecology can add to the repertoires of ecotourism guides in Peru's Chachapoya region, providing informed portraits of the history of cloud forest ecology in Peru's northeastern Andes and raising concerns about the future conservation of these mountainscapes under human impact.

The origin of modern disjunct plant distributions in the Brazilian Highlands with strong floristic affinities to distant montane rainforests of isolated mountaintops in the northeast and northern Amazonia and the Guyana Shield remains unknown. We tested the hypothesis that these unexplained biogeographical patterns reflect former ecosystem rearrang...

Changes in land and sea uses are the major drivers of global biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019). To halt biodiversity loss caused by impacts from unsustainable land/sea use practices, it is first necessary to recognise that there are multiple actors who influence the way landscapes or seascapes are used, managed and governed. The priorities of these mu...

We seek to create a geographical portrait of the sustainability of traditional and indigenous communities afflicted with food security issues present in the Andes Mountains, based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of indigenous people and accumulated wisdom of traditional agriculturalists who have developed a mixed cultural landscape—with b...

We seek to (re)construct a geocritical narrative for the essence of place, by (re)writing mountain specificities that imprint cultural traits on tropical and temperate Andean landscapes, creating a unique identity trilemma for the people of highland South America. We use onomastics as a study of mistaken individuality, with a poststructuralism appr...

The origin of modern disjunct plant distributions in the Brazilian Highlands with strong floristic affinities to distant montane rainforests of isolated mountaintops in the northeast and northern Amazonia and the Guyana Shield remains unknown. We tested the hypothesis that these unexplained biogeographical patterns reflect former ecosystem rearrang...

La Reserva Comunitaria de Uchucay mantiene un importante relicto de bosque nativo interandino, parte de la Mancomunidad El Collay de Vegetación y Bosque Protector en el austro ecuatoriano, que ha sido conservado por su relevancia en la provisión del caudal hídrico, pero del que se conocía poco en cuanto a su biodiversidad. Mediante transectos de 50...

Microrefugia Azuay Poster

There is a growing trend for inclusion of the food sovereignty dimension as a driving force of biodiversity conservation in mountain production landscapes. This is particularly important when dealing with agrobiodiversity in the tropical and temperate Andes, whereby complex agricultural systems and domesticates have incorporated ethnographic overto...

This study observed the economic and educational conditions of Biblián and carried out a geographical analysis regarding the variables of lack of education and joblessness to evaluate if these two factors can be used to predict the trend of international emigration. Poverty affects the small and mid-size cities of this southern mountainscape in Ecu...

Geoecological researchers have viewed mountain biodiversity as a response to interactive climate variables (i.e., elevation, temperature, precipitation), while conservation planners have built on this view to develop schemes to satisfy positivist, reductionist frameworks based on indicator species. More recently, montological researchers have incor...

This study reconstructs and interprets the changing range of Atlas cedar in northern Morocco over the last 9,000 years. A synthesis of fossil pollen records indicated that Atlas cedars occupied a wider range at lower elevations during the mid-Holocene than today. The mid-Holocene geographical expansion reflected low winter temperatures and higher w...

This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the a...

El libro rinde un homenaje al Dr. Axel Borsdorf quien se ha convertido en uno de los geógrafos europeos que más ha escrito sobre América Latina y el Caribe. El texto reúne a destacados geógrafos latinoamericanos que trabajaron de manera conjunta y sobre todo, establecieron una amistad con el profesor Borsdorf. A través de distintas perspectivas teó...

More than most other landforms, mountains have been at the vanguard of geographical inquiry. Whether promontories, cultural works on slopes, or even metaphorical/spiritual heights, mountain research informs current narratives of global environmental change. We review how montology shifts geographic paradigms via the novel approach of critical bioge...

The anthropogenic system of the northern Andean highlands, including Paramos and high woodlands of the tropical cloud forests, is as important as the tropical glaciers in providing environmental services of capture, sequestration, and delivery of water toward the lowlands. The Paramos have been misconstrued as natural ecosystems, but archaeology an...

RESUMEN.– Como ícono del paisaje biocultural andino, el tero serrano (Vanellus resplendens) ejemplifica la necesidad de incorporar el conocimiento ecológico tradicional para la mejor comprensión del ecosistema de montaña y para su gestión efectiva hacia la sustentabilidad de las comunidades de altura. La mitología asociada al tero serrano invita a...

Mountains have remained stronger targets of geographical enquiry than most other landforms. Whether physical edifices, cultural manipulations on slopelands, or even metaphorical ethical and spiritual heights, many angles of mountain research have informed current narratives of global environmental change. In this paper we review how Mountain Geogra...

Síntesis de varias experiencias en el campo de la socio-ornitología.

The zoomorphic metaphor of deer anatomy explains Andean identity as a coupled environmental system. This is a result of mystic realism or magic pragma-tism, which often obscures participation of the local cultures of the Andes cordil-lera, particularly in (re)defi ning their Andean self with strong biocultural anchors. Just like the antlers, the tr...

In this chapter, we explore the administration of cultural uses and the management of cultural features within protected areas. Our review emphasizes some of the emerging shifts in thinking about cultural heritage, such as the integration of the protection of natural and cultural objectives, emerging conservation paradigms of cultural landscapes an...

sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecologi...

INTRODUCCIÓN Paisaje es un término que está siendo utilizado con mayor frecuencia en situaciones que tienen que ver con manifestaciones culturales diversas, sean artísticas, científicas, económicas, religiosas o de otra índole, y sus repercusiones de disturbio y afectación con el medio ambiente, con el ecosistema y con el hábitat de las especies si...

"We use a dendrological metaphor to explain our ideas on how multifunctional agriculture, ecology and food security are interacting in the context of development and conservation with a view to reviving indigenous and traditional culture. In the paradigm shift from a top-down, dendritic approach to rural productivity to the new bottom-up, rhyzomic...

An innovative framework for sustainability helps investigate the impacts of real estate development and educational attainment of newcomers; more specifically, landscape transformation due to 'amenity migration' into the Global South. We argue that sustainability research requires a de-categorization from mutually exclusive 'human' and 'nature' div...

El paisaje cultural ha tomado fuerza como una herramienta de trabajo efectiva en favor de la conservación tanto de los recursos naturales cuanto de los culturales. Siguiendo el desarrollo de la ecología como una ciencia social, los anteriores paradigmas de conservación han sido rotos por los nuevos aportes de la ecología política. Muchos de los obj...

Indigenous communities around the world face pressures from ecotourism practices and conservation. Otavalo, Ecuador, is an example of how local spiritual values can add to the conservation efforts of ecotourism. The Imbakucha watershed includes mountain landscapes with natural and cultural values of numerous indigenous communities where most reside...

Geographers face choices in publishing research in outlets that affiliate them with a discipline that gauges the overall development of their academic standing by the approval of the peer-review process. It is not only actual publication that counts but also when and where an article is published. Well-published geographers often find themselves at...

A critical biogeographical view of the concepts of sustainability, development and conservation, reconstruct the transactions of mountainous cultural landscapes protected by the international system of Biosphere Reserves, that grapple with the management binary dilemma of art/science.

abstract. The Andean lapwing (Vanellus resplendens Tschudi) prompts rethinking of ethnoecology in neotropical cloud forests and páramos and challenges notions about conservation in mountain protected areas. Using archaeological, historical, and current evidence, I argue that the role of humans in shaping viable high-mountain bird populations is an...

The active geology of Ecuador, as volcanic, tectonic, and plutonic conditions interact in the tropical landscape, makes up for the country's high propensity to disaster. In this chapter, the anthropogenic impact of landscape change is highlighted to contribute to a better understanding of what seems to be the catastrophe-prone existence of Ecuadori...

The rate at which deforestation of montane cloud forests of the Tropical Andes is documented, and the extent of different productive land uses in those areas, make it difficult to forecast appropriate conservation scenarios for countries that occupy the crescent of the Northern Andes, abode of one of the richest biological and cultural diversity of...