Amazon.ia Core Sites

Located within the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in eastern Ecuador, the world’s most species-diverse region. Spanning 700 hectares along the Tiputini river, it was established in 1994 by Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and has produced hundreds of scientific publications.

Nestled in lowland forest at the base of the Andes in southern Peru, Los Amigos encompasses both a biological station and a 146,000-hectare conservation concession. Over more than 25 years, the station has hosted hundreds of research projects, trained thousands of students and produced more than 500 publications.

The Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve is a globally recognized model of biodiversity conservation and participatory natural resource management located in the central Brazilian Amazon. Covering 1.124 million hectares and home to 177 communities, it protects highly biodiverse floodplain ecosystems and iconic Amazonian wildlife. Together with the Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve and the Tefé National Forest, it forms one of the largest protected landscapes in Amazonia, supporting sustainable livelihoods and community-based management of fisheries, forests, and wildlife.

Situated within the world's most biologically diverse protected area, Madidi National Park and Natural Integrated Management Area, and overlapping with three Indigenous territories, the Tuichi River is one of Bolivia’s most important ecotourism sites. Long-term wildlife monitoring in the valley has already contributed regionally relevant findings on some of the Amazon’s most charismatic and intriguing species including the jaguar, tapir, giant anteater, white-lipped peccary, ocelot, and short-eared dog.

Established in 1979 and located near Manaus, Brazil, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) is the longest running landscape-scale ecological experiment that investigates the effects of habitat fragmentation on tropical rainforests. The project created forest fragments of multiple sizes to study the effects of fragmentation on the plants, animals, and ecosystem dynamics. Due to the long history of data, the 200km2 site also assesses the impacts of edge effects, landscape ecology, and climate change on biodiversity. The project is managed by the Brazilian Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA). The nearby Adolfo Ducke Forest was established as one of the most intensively studied areas of tropical forest in the world. It is a 10,000-hectare protected area of the Amazon rainforest on the outskirts of the city of Manaus, Brazil and was established in 1963. The reserve consists of research plots to study the flora and fauna and serves as a basis for biodiversity surveys in other areas of the Amazon.