Knowledge & Research Hub

Puyu Sacha serves as a living laboratory for the study, documentation, and understanding of Andean cloud forest ecosystems. The Knowledge & Research Hub brings together scientific publications, field studies, technical reports, audiovisual documentation, and conservation insights generated through ongoing work within the reserve.

This platform reflects our commitment to transparency, evidence-based conservation, and knowledge sharing. By integrating research findings, ecological monitoring data, and educational resources, we aim to contribute to the broader understanding of biodiversity, forest dynamics, and climate resilience in central Peru.

The Hub includes:

Scientific studies and peer-reviewed publications
Technical reports and biodiversity assessments
Field documentation and ecological monitoring records
Educational materials and conservation resources
News, updates, and multimedia content related to research and environmental initiatives

Through this knowledge platform, Puyu Sacha strengthens collaboration with researchers, institutions, conservation organizations, and the wider community, supporting informed decision-making and long-term ecosystem protection.

Knowledge generation is not secondary to conservation — it is one of its fundamental pillars.

Global Big Day at Puyu Sacha

As part of this effort, Puyu Sacha has taken part in the Global Big Day — the worldwide bird count organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology through eBird — in its 2019 and 2022 editions. These intensive observation days generate open records of the reserve's avifauna and connect local monitoring to one of the largest citizen science initiatives in the world, in a country that consistently ranks among the top globally for species recorded.

Knowledge generation is not secondary to conservation — it is one of its fundamental pillars.

Global Big Day 2019

The following video documents our participation in the 2019 edition, carried out in the Puyu Sacha forest under the direction of Claudia Torres and David Segurado. It offers a glimpse of the terrain, the observation work, and the species encountered over the course of a single day in the cloud forest.

Global Big Day 2022

This video documents the 2022 edition, once again carried out in the Puyu Sacha forest. It records another full day of observation across the reserve's altitudinal gradient, adding to the accumulated knowledge of the birds that inhabit this cloud forest.

Research and Scientific Documentation

The birds recorded during a single day of the Global Big Day are one window into Puyu Sacha's biodiversity. Another, slower window has been open for more than two decades: the network of permanent forest plots that has made this valley one of the most closely studied altitudinal gradients in the Peruvian Andes.

Beginning in 2001, researchers from the Forest Herbarium (MOL) of the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, working with APRODES and with support from the Darwin Initiative and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, established a series of one-hectare permanent plots following the methodology of the RAINFOR research consortium. The network runs from the upper reaches of the Puyu Sacha cloud forest, close to 3,000 m, down to 800 m — a gradient that encompasses hyper-humid montane cloud forest, humid premontane forest, and even sub-xerophilous formations, all within a few hours' travel of one another.

Twenty plots have been established to date, many re-measured between three and eight years after installation. Together they have allowed the identification and continuous monitoring of more than 11,000 individual trees, tagged, mapped, and in most cases collected as botanical specimens now held in the Herbarium's digitized collection. The plot data are shared internationally through the ForestPlots platform of the RAINFOR network, making this one of the few long-term forest datasets in the Peruvian montane belt available to researchers worldwide.

The findings matter beyond the inventory. Studies in the montane stratum have recorded alpha diversity of up to 147 tree species per hectare, alongside species new to science, endemics, and new records for Peru — evidence that the forest remnants of the Chanchamayo valley hold exceptional conservation value in a landscape otherwise heavily transformed by human activity. Population dynamics studies at around 2,000 m have found a relatively low annual tree mortality rate (1.07%) paired with a very high recruitment rate (2.94%), indicating strong regenerative capacity; tree diameters and basal areas in these montane forests prove comparable to, and in some cases greater than, those of many Amazonian lowland forests situated 2,000 m lower on the gradient.

Since 2017 this work has been reinforced through the DINAFOR project — Forest dynamics of the montane and premontane forests of central Peru and their adaptation to climate change — funded by Cienciactiva–CONCYTEC and carried out with UNALM, extending the focus from inventory toward the question of how these forests will respond to a changing climate.

Source documents

Permanent Plots — Forest Herbarium, UNALM
The institutional record of the plot network: its origins in 2001, the rationale for choosing the Chanchamayo gradient as a research setting, the RAINFOR methodology adopted, the publications generated, and the current scope of the network.

Permanent Plots in the Montane and Premontane Forests of Central Peru — Sonia Palacios Ramos, Forest Herbarium, UNALM
A synthesis of research associated with the plot network, covering floristic composition and structure, alpha diversity, forest population dynamics, and the morphological attributes of tree species across the 900–2,800 m gradient — including how leaf form, bark secretions, and fruit type shift systematically with altitude. The presentation also sets out remaining research priorities: beta diversity analysis, hydrological regime dynamics, and correlated studies of wildlife, soils, and insect fauna.