. Ecuador, Perú : Cuyabeno-Güeppí . Ci)eh¿a déf rio Curarayl ,~^~.^uroroY River watershed spongy root mat covers the hill clays, similar to root mats typically found on sandy soils. When the advance team established the campsite ten days prior to our arrival, the water was m higher than during the inventory. The receding waters exposed a muddy lakefront that became increasingly more expansive because the waters retreated substantially each day. Garzacocha has a muddy, relatively flat bottom. The black waters were unpleasantly warm, reaching temperatures of 31°C by midday and 28°C in the m
. Ecuador, Perú : Cuyabeno-Güeppí . Ci)eh¿a déf rio Curarayl ,~^~.^uroroY River watershed spongy root mat covers the hill clays, similar to root mats typically found on sandy soils. When the advance team established the campsite ten days prior to our arrival, the water was m higher than during the inventory. The receding waters exposed a muddy lakefront that became increasingly more expansive because the waters retreated substantially each day. Garzacocha has a muddy, relatively flat bottom. The black waters were unpleasantly warm, reaching temperatures of 31°C by midday and 28°C in the morning. The lake was shallow, about 1 m at its deepest point, and measured about 150 m across at its widest point. In contrast, the Lagartococha River was about 15 m across, and deeply entrenched into a box-shaped channel with a greatest depth of -10 m. The river course itself is dynamic, with daily changes in water levels causing islands of floating vegetation to merge and close areas that only days earlier were navigable passages. On our trip down the Aguarico and up the Lagartococha to our first site, we spent an hour pulling the boats through a 50-m stretch of floating grass mats that had appeared since the advance team had left two days earlier. On the western edge of the northern part of the lake, a tremendous area had been burned, spanning several square kilometers. The area is not immediately obvious on the satellite image, as it is difficult to distinguish the burned area from the seasonally flooded areas near the lake edge that also only have sparse vegetation. R. Borman reports that the area was burned by the Kichwa 15-16 years ago. Vegetation has barely begun to regrow, indicating extremely infertile soils (Fig. lOA). The Ecuadorian military operates a guardpost at the entrance to Garzacocha, while the Peruvian military is situated at the far end of the Cocha Aguas Negras, about 2 km upstream along the Lagartococha River. Both are located on the highest hills
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Keywords: ., bookauthorfieldmuseumofnaturalhistor, booksubjectnaturalhistory
