The high páramo on the flanks of Antisana Volcano, Ecuador

Notes from the Field · Highlands Biological Station

A Field Course
Far Afield

From the southern Appalachians to the high Andes — students compared two of the world's most storied mountain ecosystems firsthand.

By Jim Costa · Executive Director, Highlands Biological Station

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Home base

Highlands, NC

Appalachians

Southern Blue Ridge

Andean base

Wildsumaco, Ecuador

High Andes

Antisana Volcano & Pichincha

Jim Costa

Executive Director · Highlands Biological Station

I'm fresh back from Ecuador and the successful 4th run of our "Temperate-Tropical Ecology & Biogeography" field course!

There may be no place like home, but there's perhaps no better way for young biologists to appreciate their familiar "ecological" home here than to travel to distant lands and different ecosystems, and directly compare the two. With HBS as our southern Appalachian base and Wildsumaco Biological Station as our base in the high Andes of Ecuador, our students compared firsthand how geology, topography, and latitude shape biological communities.

The same physical effects of elevation, slope, and aspect apply in the Appalachians and Andes, but the different histories of North and South America in time and space make for quite a dramatic contrast in biological community structure and makeup: each with a unique cast of characters in the grand "ecological theater and evolutionary play" — as the distinguished 20th century ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson put it — but on a world stage.

Jim Costa · Executive Director, Highlands Biological Station

We take "field course" to a whole new level, literally and figuratively!