User:Catalina/Thesis

Time Machine: Ice Age in the Andes. Open Day, Science Park, October 7th 2017

This is a test or prototype of my thesis project: with a video installation of two screens, we showed in the first screen a 3D animation of the shifting elevational distributions of the páramos, Andean forests, and lowlands forests. During cold conditions, the low elevational position of the páramos cause the many isolated páramo islands to fuse, while during warmer conditions the páramos form isolated archipelagos.
The biogeographic history of the páramos has been reconstructed for the last million years and exposes the driver of the evolutionary powerhouse, a mechanism described as the ‘flickering connectivity system’ (Flantua & Hooghiemstra, 2018). The second screen showed photography of Colombian páramos and several current plants species.
As part of the installation, also three different generation of microscopes were used to explain how this theory takes form after identifying pollen from deep fossil pollen records.
More info here:
https://ecologyofthepast.info/2017/10/27/uva-open-day-3d-visualization-of-the-ice-ages-in-the-andes/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKBG-K__fFc