Cartography and GIS studies of the Cordillera del Cóndor region Back to Home This project included development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Cordillera del Cóndor region of Ecuador and Peru.  One major objective is to study the distribution of plant species with respect to environmental variables within the region such as geological substrate, soils, slope, and precipitation.  Another objective is to classify and map the vegetation types in the region based on remote sensing data as well as ground truthing. The base map of the Cordillera del Cóndor region was developed by the technical staff of the Ecuador Conservation Data Center in Quito, headed by geographer Pablo Almeida, using ArcGIS software.  The available data layers include geology and vegetation, the “digital elevation model” of the topography of the region, and the botanical data from TROPICOS, Missouri Botanical Garden´s TROPICOS database. One product of the Cordillera del Cóndor flora project will be the availability of the GIS map of the region online, using an internet map server, along with the botanical information from TROPICOS, that will allow the user to plot species distributions within the region and analyze distributions with respect to several environmental variables.  A copy of the base map for the Cordillera del Cóndor region is accessible from the website’s table of contents. TOP