12 Jun 09

The team will trek across the Andes to record environmental changes

This summer, scientists from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University are joining a group of artists on an expedition to the Andes in Peru.

The expedition will visit shrinking glaciers, cloud forests, lower forests, areas of deforestation and the Amazon. Trekking from 4,000m above sea level to 200m, it will be a period of three weeks of artistic inspiration in the Andes witnessing the changes already being recorded by the scientists and people living in and around the forests. The artists and scientists are being brought together under the Cape Farewell project, which aims to stimulate artwork founded in scientific research.

During the expedition a group of 14 Cape Farewell voyagers will visit several science stations run by the ECI, ranging from the lowland Amazon forest to the high Andes, to understand what determines the carbon dynamics of Andean montane forests and how this may be altered by climate change. The 2009 Andes expedition is Cape Farewell’s first expedition outside of the Artic. On their return, the resulting artwork will be exhibited in the UK at the South Bank Centre and the Eden Project.

Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Professor of Ecosystem Science at the ECI, said: ‘The cloud forests of the Andes and the lowlands of the Amazon are biologically the richest place on earth. For instance, they are home to 15 per cent of all plant species on the planet, half of which are found nowhere else. They also may be particularly vulnerable to climate change and we are only now beginning to piece together a picture of how these ecosystems are responding.’

ECI and Cape Farewell are also involved in the annual Tipping Point event at Oxford University, at which artists and scientists explore climate change during a two- day conference in September of each year. This year is the fifth Tipping Point to be hosted by the ECI.