Biotope Patterns, Phytodiversity and Forestline in the Andes, based on GIS and Remote Sensing Data

This chapter illustrates how a combination of biological field data with remote sensing data and climatological, pedo-logical and topological Geographic Information System (GIS) data can be used to obtain large-scale phytodiversity patterns. The tropical Andes are one of the hot spots of biological diversity. Phytodiversity increases with increasing warmth and humidity as one moves from the poles to the equator, except for continental and coastal deserts. Mountains act as barriers for advective atmospheric moisture and front ranges trap much of the water with often little left for inner chains or leeward slopes. On the basis of climatic, soil geographical and topographical data, diversity was determined in a 50 by 50 km window. From the single diversity layers, e.g. precipitation, temperature, soil texture, topographic diversity, an unweighted mean has been calculated and aggregated to geodiversity. The BIO-GIS database was also used to analyse the forestline/treeline in the South American Andes.