Atlas of wetlands on South America's west coast
Basis for the protection of coastal ecosystems along the Pacific Bird Migration Route
An important step in our cross-boundary engagement in Latin America consists in the creation of a comprehensive data collection on the coastal wetlands of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. As central aspect of this effort, we now made a new version of the online atlas available that comes with new features, intended to facilitate citizen sciences and support environmentalists and governments in their conservation efforts.
Check out here the new version of the atlas „Humedales Costeros“ : https://humedalescosteros.org/atlas/ [in Spanish]
The wetlands of the arid-semiarid Pacific coast of South America line up like a string of pearls along this coast and form vital oases for migratory birds and other animal and plant species in a region dominated by deserts, scrubland, and dry forests. They form local centers of biodiversity and inherit great socio-cultural values.
The atlas provides a profile on each wetland with information on its flora and fauna, shorebird counts, watersheds, water quality, conservation threats, etc. Thus, providing relevant information for the protection of these areas to local activists, decision makers, visitors and others.
A new, user-friendly, and modernized interface has now been introduced, allowing the wetlands to be filtered by species and categories such as typology, threats, vegetation, etc. Furthermore, the platform allows users to register and to add photos, data, and observations to each wetland's profile, as well as areas that have not yet been included, encouraging citizen science.
Moreover, in cooperation with our local project partners we developed at the same time environmental education materials for schools and local stakeholders, that are linked to the atlas.
The atlas supports our long-term efforts, working towards a regional conservation scheme for coastal wetlands in the arid-semiarid landscape between Chile, Peru and Ecuador.
