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Summary Resource histories determine how particular parts of the environment come to be defined as valuable. As elsewhere, protected areas in Latin America link the governance of people, territory, and resources by reinterpreting and reclassifying practices and environments. Set in highland Peru, the article focuses on how such revisions imply contestation of both history and future. It explores particular modes of claiming space through an archeology of the claims to knowledge and legitimacy put forward by a national park and a campesino community, respectively. Claims to space entwine with social struggles about local development where territorial claims are based on different notions of history and interpretations of the esthetic and productive values of the landscape. While the park officials navigate interests of conservation, tourism, and extraction, the campesino community mobilizes a different set of values and interests based on their historical occupation of the territories. These processes of contestation over authority and legitimacy highlight different views on the role of landscapes in the history and progress of local communities. Conservation may not only dispossess people of their land and natural resources, but also of labor and territorial sovereignty. This case shows how an Andean campesino community counters such movements by a wide repertoire of legal and social actions that works simultaneously in legal and extra-legal domains. Paper works mediate claims to territorial sovereignty, people, and resources. These claims involve contestations over interpretations of history which, besides their oral forms, materialize in paperwork such as official communications, community records, and cadastral maps, as well as in visual representations, internal statutes, and deliberate history writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study in assessment of erosion hotspots in an Andean watershed. To do this, we made use of an interface called Geospatial Modelling of Soil Erosion (GEMSE): a tool that integrates Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model. Its advantages are: (i) it is independent of any special GIS software used to create maps and to visualize the results; (ii) the results can be used to produce response surfaces relating outputs (e.g. soil loss, runoff) with simple inputs (e.g. climate, soils, topography); (iii) the scale, resolution and area covered by the different layers can be different among them, which facilitates the use of different sources of information. The objective of this paper is to show GEMSE''s performance in a specific case study of soil erosion in La Encañada watershed (Peru) where the hillslope version of WEPP has been previously validated. Resulting runoff and soil loss maps show the spatial distribution of these processes. Though these maps do not give the total runoff and soil loss at the watershed level, they can be used to identify hotspots that will aid decision makers to make recommendations and plan actions for soil and water conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A large sedimentary forearc basin developed in Cenozoic times between the present-day Coastal Cordillera and the Western Cordillera of the Central Andes, called Moquegua basin in southern Peru. The basin is filled by Moquegua Group deposits (~50 to 4Ma) comprising mostly siliciclastic mudstones, sandstones and conglomerates as well as volcanic intercalations. Several facies changes both, along orogenic strike and through time, are described and have led to subdivision into four sedimentary units (Moquegua A, B, C and D). In this paper we present a refined stratigraphic scheme of the Moquegua Group combined with the first provenance analysis of the Moquegua basin based on (i) semi-quantitative analysis of heavy mineral abundance, (ii) electron microprobe (EMP) and laser ablation (LA) ICP-MS analyses of single detrital amphibole and Fe–Ti oxide grains, and (iii) comparative analysis of the different potential source rocks to clearly identify the most likely sources. Results allow us to reconstruct sediment provenance and to relate changes of the erosion-sedimentation system in the Moquegua basin to the evolution of the Andean orogen. At ~50 to ~40Ma the Moquegua basin was close to sea level and fed by low energy rivers transporting mainly metamorphic basement and Jurassic-Cretaceous sedimentary detritus from local and distal sources. The latter might be as far as the present Eastern Cordillera. From ~35Ma on the distal sediment sources were cut off by the uplift of the Altiplano and Eastern Cordillera leading to higher energy fluvial systems and increasing importance of local sources, especially the relevant volcanic arcs. From 25Ma on volcanic arc rocks became the predominant sources for Moquegua Group sediments. The 10Ma time lag observed between the onset of uplift-induced facies and provenance changes (at ~35Ma) and the onset of intense magmatic activity (at ~25Ma) suggests that magmatic addition was not the main driver for crustal thickening and uplift in the Central Andes during latest Eocene to Oligocene time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Yanesha, also called Amuesha, is a group of amerindian people, belonging to the arawak linguistic family. They dwell in the central region of Peru, at the oriental foothills of the Andes. Their territory covers a large range of ecological settings, and communities spread from 1800 down to 400m/snm. The Yanesha culture is vivid to this day, and people strongly rely on traditional medicine in their everyday life. An exhaustive ethnopharmacological survey leads us to collect 249 species with medicinal uses. An overview of the Yanesha pharmacopoeia, linked with ethnomedicinal practices is presented in this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Glacier recession in response to climate warming has resulted in an increase in the size and number of glacial lakes. Glacial lakes are an important focus for research as they impact water resources, glacier mass balance, and some produce catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Glaciers in Peru have retreated and thinned in recent decades, prompting the need for monitoring of ice- and water-bodies across the cordilleras. These monitoring efforts have been greatly facilitated by the availability of satellite imagery. However, knowledge gaps remain, particularly in relation to the formation, temporal evolution, and catastrophic drainage of glacial lakes. In this paper we address this gap by producing the most current and detailed glacial lake inventory in Peru and provide a set of reproducible methods that can be applied consistently for different time periods, and for other mountainous regions. The new lake inventory presented includes a total of 4557 glacial lakes covering a total area of 328.85 km2. In addition to detailing lake distribution and extent, the inventory includes other metrics, such as dam type and volume, which are important for GLOF hazard assessments. Analysis of these metrics showed that the majority of glacial lakes are detached from current glaciers (97%) and are classified as either embedded (i.e. bedrock dammed; ~64% of all lakes) or (moraine) dammed (~28% of all lakes) lakes. We also found that lake size varies with dam type; with dammed lakes tending to have larger areas than embedded lakes. The inventory presented provides an unparalleled view of the current state of glacial lakes in Peru and represents an important first step towards (1) improved understanding of glacial lakes and their topographic and morphological characteristics and (2) assessing risk associated with GLOFs. • We present a new contemporary and comprehensive lake inventory for the Peruvian Cordilleras • We provide a set of inventorying methods to facilitate replicability in other locations, globally • We record and analyse a number of important lake metrics for understanding GLOF hazards • We estimate lake volume in all glaciated cordilleras and compare these with other studies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2010, as a result of the increased attention to quinoa as a highly nutritious crop and increased international demand, the acreage and production of quinoa expanded rapidly in the Andes region. Global demand and price increases create opportunities for smallholder Andean farmers but also concerns on the environmental impacts of quinoa acreage expansion and the changing quinoa production practices of smallholder farmers. In this paper, we assess the sustainability performance of smallholder quinoa production in the Junín region in the central highlands of Peru. We use primary data from a two-round survey among 367 smallholder farmers in the Junín region and secondary data from Ecoinvent and LCFoods databases. We use a combination of a life cycle assessment to assess the various environmental impacts of quinoa production; a data envelopment analysis to link the environmental performance of quinoa production with the economic performance, and quantify the eco-efficiency of individual farms; and a fractional regression model to examine the heterogeneity in eco-efficiency across farms. We find that conventional quinoa production creates a global warming potential of 7.82 kg CO 2 -equivalent per kg of protein, which is comparable to the environmental impact of organic quinoa production and production of other grain crops but much below the impact of production of rice and food from animal origin. Also, the eco-efficiency among smallholder quinoa producers is low, on average 18.2%, and that excessive use of mineral fertilizers and a switch to mechanical threshing explains this low eco-efficiency. We conclude that quinoa, with its specific nutritional characteristics, can make a contribution to a more sustainable global food production but that attention is needed to the soil fertility management practices of smallholder Andean farmers in order to reduce the environmental impact and increase the efficiency of smallholder quinoa production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]