| 2010 PLANS |  |
Photo 1 Photo 2
Our expectations of species richness and discovery are enormous when we embark on our rapid inventories to explore the world’s most diverse forests, still uncharted scientifically. Our latest inventory to the ancestral lands of the Maijuna in northeastern Peru was no exception. In October our team of Field Museum and Peruvian scientists inventoried two sites in the 830,494 acres that the Maijuna are requesting as a Regional Conservation Area; the social team visited the area in July. We were unprepared for our major finding: an ecosystem previously unknown in the Peruvian Amazon that for now we are calling an Amazonian Tableland. No more than 330 – 390 feet in elevation, these flattop hills in the Putumayo drainage have a distinct vegetation and many plant species may be new to science. This tableland is likely associated with the “Arch of Iquitos” geologic formation and seems to form an archipelago that stretches from Güeppí in the west to Ampiyacu in the east. In our inventory we found a handful of bird species — characteristic of poor soils — only in the Amazonian Tableland.
Photo 1 Photo 2
Our expectations of species richness and discovery are enormous when we embark on our rapid inventories to explore the world’s most diverse forests, still uncharted scientifically. Our latest inventory to the ancestral lands of the Maijuna in northeastern Peru was no exception. In October our team of Field Museum and Peruvian scientists inventoried two sites in the 830,494 acres that the Maijuna are requesting as a Regional Conservation Area; the social team visited the area in July. We were unprepared for our major finding: an ecosystem previously unknown in the Peruvian Amazon that for now we are calling an Amazonian Tableland. No more than 330 – 390 feet in elevation, these flattop hills in the Putumayo drainage have a distinct vegetation and many plant species may be new to science. This tableland is likely associated with the “Arch of Iquitos” geologic formation and seems to form an archipelago that stretches from Güeppí in the west to Ampiyacu in the east. In our inventory we found a handful of bird species — characteristic of poor soils — only in the Amazonian Tableland.
