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The Pisque river basin in Ecuador has a high presence of the floricultural industry, hence the aim of the research is to estimate the losses of pesticides that enter the river water through sources such as surface runoff, contact with the ground, permeate of a previous runoff or by infiltration, and that can be measured in the final channel of the Pisque river before its mouth. In order to know the pesticides used, surveys have been carried out with flower producers. The measurements were made in the Granobles and Guachalá rivers, the two tributaries of the Pisque river; and at two separate points on the same river Pisque, one immediately after the conjunction between the two tributaries and a point before their mouth to the next river. The flow gauges were monthly from June 2018 to May 2019. As a sampling method, SPMD and POCIS passive devices were used during the three dry months, from June to August 2018. To obtain the retention rates of the passive devices, a calibration with the pesticides was carried out in the laboratory through a hydrodynamic channel. Twenty-four main active ingredients were identified from the surveys, mostly compounds with Type III and Type IV toxicities. According to the results of the model, the fluvial load of pesticides in surface waters was 2,982.24 Kg between the months of June 2018 to May 2019, with environmental degradation of various compounds along the stretch of the river. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain agriculture has been conceptualized in terms of altitudinal zones, verticality, and agroecosystems, but an alternative framework is that of adaptive dynamics, conceptualizing farming in terms of choice between options based on optimizing returns in different frameworks of rational decision making in different production zones. In this framework, production zones are not defined solely in terms of altitude but also in terms of soil, slope, and access to irrigation. A recent option in the irrigated production zone has been greenhouse floriculture, which has become one of the most globally competitive agricultural exports in equatorial mountains. In Ecuador, greenhouse floriculture expanded in the 1990s partly in response to favorable trade agreements but also due to diffusion of technologies from multiple sources and local entrepreneurship. Interviews with various actors and fieldwork provide details on greenhouse adaptive strategies and suggest that this agroindustrial activity has proven unusually resilient to changes in global trade patterns and changes in climate. It has provided an option for employment that has stemmed outmigration and encouraged some immigration of labor. At the same time, there are concerns regarding impacts on water resources and regarding pesticide impacts. Excessively static or ecosystemicist conceptions of mountain environments and agricultural strategies fail to anticipate the full range of possibilities for development in the diverse production zones of high-altitude regions. These possibilities also help to contest assertions about the inevitable decline of mountain agriculture in the face of modernization and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]