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Rainfall changes due to climate change and their potential impacts on forests demand the development of predictable tools coupling vegetation dynamics to hydrologic processes. Such tools need to be accurate at local scales (i.e. < 100 ha) to develop efficient forest management strategies for climate change adaptation. In this study, we developed and tested a dynamic forest model to predict hydrological balance of North Patagonian temperate rainforests on Chiloe Island, Chile (42° S). The developed model includes detailed calculations of forest water fluxes and incorporates the dynamical linkage of rainfall regimes to soil moisture, and individual tree growth. We confronted model results with detailed field measurements of water fluxes in a young secondary stand (YS). We used the model to compare forest sensitivity in the YS and an old-growth stand (OG, > 500 yr-old), i.e. changes in forest evapotranspiration, soil moisture and forest structure (biomass and basal area). We evaluated sensitivity using changes in rainfall regimes comparable to future climatic scenarios for this century in the study region. The model depicted well the hydrological balance of temperate rainforests. We found a higher evapotranspi ration in OG than YS under current climatic conditions. Dryer climatic conditions predicted for this century in the study area led to changes in the hydrological balance that impacted forest structure, with stronger impacts in OG. Changes in climatic parameters decreased evapotranspiration (up to 15% in OG compared to current values) and soil moisture to 32% . These changes in water fluxes induced decreases in above-ground biomass in OG (up to 27%). Our results support the use of the model for detailed analyses of climate change impacts on hydrological balance of forests. Also, it provides a tool suitable for analyses of the impacts of multiple drivers of global change on forest processes (e.g., climate change, fragmentation, forest management). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For thousands of years, hunter-gatherer societies from southern and central Patagonia inhabited a Subantarctic landscape. In this paper, we argue against the traditional assumption that these were simple societies. We examine population diversity from ecological, archaeological, and ethno-historical data sources, emphasizing the economic and social variability while considering social change through time. We end by analyzing processes of the development of social complexity and hierarchy in recent times, when the industrial world violently disarticulated those societies. All this evidence suggests levels of social variability and complexity archaeologists have not expected. The paper critically reviews traditional archaeological approaches and suggests new research lines that allow for a better understanding of social dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego include contrasting environments and populations. Both were settled more than 10,000 years ago, although the coastal resources were not intensively exploited until four millennia later. The littoral resource exploitation had very different characteristics on the Atlantic compared to the Magellan-Fuegian coasts. Generalized strategies were maintained in the former, while in the latter the inhabitants developed a specialization—they became intensively dependent on the littoral and marine resources and designed special technological means for their procurement and processing, including navigation capability. This process began some 6,400 radiocarbon years ago and these sea-nomads colonized the southern- most archipelago from the Beagle Channel down to Cape Horn. After synthesizing the settling of Patagonia, this paper focuses on the process of colonization and cultural endurance of the seanomads until the time of European contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]