Ecuador: Major Landscapes and Ecosystems
Three distinct regions comprise Ecuador’s landscape: the Andes, the western coastal lowlands, and the eastern jungles of the upper Amazonian rainforest. The central highlands of the Andes are composed of two major volcanic mountain ranges, each about 400 km long, with a valley nestled between them. This valley is known as “the avenue of the volcanoes,” and the PanAmerican highway follows it from Quito in the north to Cuenca in the south.
The western lowlands feature a variety of ecosystems, including mangrove swamp. Mangroves are trees that have evolved the ability to grow in salt water. These form forests and are considered to be colonizing species: their roots trap sediments which build up the soil and eventually support further growth of plant life. The roots also provide habitat for fish, and the branches of the mangrove trees provide nesting for birds.
The tropical dry forest, another unique ecosystem, is found in hot areas with well-defined wet and dry seasons, as on the coast. The trees of these forests lose their leaves during the dry season and tend to grow in a less concentrated pattern than those in the rainforest, creating a more open habitat.
In remote valleys at higher elevations, tropical cloud forests are found. These are so named because they trap clouds which drench the forest in a fine mist, allowing some particularly delicate forms of plant life to thrive. The dense vegetation of this type of forest gives it a mysterious and delicate fairy-tale appearance (Rachowiecki, 1997).
At high elevations in the Andes lies the paramo, a type of grass and shrub-land. This ecosystem covers ten percent of Ecuador’s land area and is characterized by a harsh climate, high levels of ultraviolet light and wet, peaty soils. It occurs only from the highlands of Costa Rica to northern Peru; in Ecuador, over half a million people live on the paramo (Rachowiecki, 1997).
The eastern lowlands of the Andes are the beginning of an enormous ecosystem known broadly as the tropical rainforest. This ecosystem crosses numerous borders in South America and, in one form or another, stretches eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. The Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the Oriente, is one of Earth's most biodiverse regions. With more than twelve thousand plant species, Ecuador ranks sixth in the world in flora biodiversity. The Ecuadorian rainforest is one of the wettest places on earth, receiving over nearly three metres of rainfall per year. In comparison, we in the Pacific Northwest see about two metres of rain per year.
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