The North of the South: The Geopolitical Implications of “Pacific Consensus” in South America and the Brazilian Dilemma

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier A. Vadell
Keyword(s):  
1929 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-231
Author(s):  
George N. Wolcott

The map of South America shows Peru as a rather long, narrow country, broadening at the north, and presumably tropical in climate judging by its position just south of the Equator, but with high mountains close to the coast. But it does not show the cold ocean current coming from the south—the Humboldt Current—or ar least we are not accustomed to noticing such presumably minor features, even though in the case of Peru, this is equal in importance with the mountains in determining the climate of the country and every factor that the climate may affect.


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (9) ◽  
pp. 1902-1912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josefina Moraes Arraut ◽  
Prakki Satyamurty

Abstract December–March climatologies of precipitation and vertically integrated water vapor transport were analyzed and compared to find the main paths by which moisture is fed to high-rainfall regions in the Southern Hemisphere in this season. The southern tropics (20°S–0°) exhibit high rainfall and receive ample moisture from the northern trades, except in the eastern Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. This interhemispheric flow is particularly important for Amazonian rainfall, establishing the North Atlantic as the main source of moisture for the forest during its main rainy season. In the subtropics the rainfall distribution is very heterogeneous. The meridional average of precipitation between 35° and 25°S is well modulated by the meridional water vapor transport through the 25°S latitude circle, being greater where this transport is from the north and smaller where it is from the south. In South America, to the east of the Andes, the moisture that fuels precipitation between 20° and 30°S comes from both the tropical South and North Atlantic Oceans whereas between 30° and 40°S it comes mostly from the North Atlantic after passing over the Amazonian rain forest. The meridional transport (across 25°S) curve exhibits a double peak over South America and the adjacent Atlantic, which is closely reproduced in the mean rainfall curve. This corresponds to two local maxima in the two-dimensional field of meridional transport: the moisture corridor from Amazonia into the continental subtropics and the moisture flow coming from the southern tropical Atlantic into the subtropical portion of the South Atlantic convergence zone. These two narrow pathways of intense moisture flow could be suitably called “aerial rivers.” Their longitudinal positions are well defined. The yearly deviations from climatology for moisture flow and rainfall correlate well (0.75) for the continental peak but not for the oceanic peak (0.23). The structure of two maxima is produced by the effect of transients in the time scale of days.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berrocoso Manuel ◽  
Del Valle Arroyo Pablo Emilio ◽  
Colorado Jaramillo David Julián ◽  
Gárate Jorge ◽  
Fernández-Ros Alberto ◽  
...  

<p>The northwest of South America is conformed by the territories of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Great part of these territories make up the Northern Andes Block (BAN). The tectonic and volcanic activity in the northwest of South America is directly related to the interaction of the South American plate, and the Nazca and Caribbean plates, with the Maracaibo and Panama-Chocó micro plates. The high seismic activity and the high magnitude of the recorded earthquakes make any study necessary to define this complex geodynamic region more precisely. This work presents the velocity models obtained through GNSS-GPS observations obtained in public continuous monitoring stations in the region. The observations of the Magna-eco network (Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute) are integrated with models already obtained by other authors from the observations of the GEORED network (Colombian Geological Service). The observations have been processed using Bernese software v.52 using the PPP technique; obtaining topocentric time series. To obtain the speeds, a process of filtering and adjustment of the topocentric series has been carried out. Based on this velocity model, regional structures have been defined within the Northern Andes Block through a differentiation process based on the corresponding speeds of the South American, Nazca and Caribbean tectonic plates. Local geodynamic structures within the BAN itself have been established through cluster analysis based on both the direction and the magnitude of each of the vectors obtained. Finally, these structures have been correlated with the most significant geodynamic elements (fractures, faults, subduction processes, etc.) and with the associated seismic activity.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Bahr ◽  
Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr ◽  
Andrea Jaeschke ◽  
Christiano Chiessi ◽  
Francisco Cruz ◽  
...  

<p>Eastern Brazil belongs to the ecologically most vulnerable regions on Earth due to its extreme intra- and inter-annual variability in precipitation amount. In order to constrain the driving forces behind this strong natural fluctuations we investigated a high-resolution sediment core taken off the Jequitinhonha river mouth in central E Brazil to reconstruct Holocene river run-off and moisture availability in the river’s catchment. Modern day climate in the hinterland of the Jequitinhonha is influenced by the South American Summer Monsoon (SASM), in particular by the manifestation of the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ) during austral summer. Variations in the position and strength of the SACZ will have immediate impact on the moisture balance over the continent and hence influence sediment and water delivery. Our multi-proxy records, comprising XRF core-scanning, grain size, mineralogical (XRD), as well as organic biomarker analyses indicate abrupt centennial scale variations between dry and wet conditions throughout the past ~5 kyrs. Our results document a gradual weakening of the SASM over the past ~2,7 kyrs driven by changes in the intertropical heat distribution. This long-term trend is superposed by centennial to millennial-scale spatial shifts in moisture distribution that result from migrations of the SACZ. The combination of both processes caused increasingly pronounced aridity spells in eastern South America over the past 2 kyrs. As the spatial fluctuations were triggered by freshwater anomalies in the North Atlantic, we surmise that enhanced meltwater input into the North Atlantic due to future global warming might severely increase the risk for mega-droughts in tropical South America.</p>


Paleobiology ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. David Webb

When the isthmian land bridge triggered the Great American Interchange, a large majority of land-mammal families crossed reciprocally between North and South America at about 2.5 Ma (i.e., Late Pliocene). Initially land-mammal dynamics proceeded as predicted by equilibrium theory, with roughly equal reciprocal mingling on both continents. Also as predicted, the impact of the interchange faded in North America after about 1 m.y. In South America, contrary to such predictions, the interchange became decidedly unbalanced: during the Pleistocene, groups of North American origin continued to diversify at exponential rates. Whereas only about 10% of North American genera are derived from southern immigrants, more than half of the modern mammalian fauna of South America, measured at the generic level, stems from northern immigrants. In addition, extinctions more severely decimated interchange taxa in North America, where six families were lost, than in South America, where only two immigrant families became extinct.This paper presents a two-phase ecogeographic model to explain the asymmetrical results of the land-mammal interchange. During the humid interglacial phase, the tropics were dominated by rain forests, and the principal biotic movement was from Amazonia to Central America and southern Mexico. During the more arid glacial phase, savanna habitats extended broadly right through tropical latitudes. Because the source area in the temperate north was six times as large as that in the south, immigrants from the north outnumbered those from the south. One prediction of this hypothesis is that immigrants from the north generally should reach higher latitudes in South America than the opposing contingent of land-mammal taxa in North America. Another prediction is that successful interchange families from the north should experience much of their phylogenetic diversification in low latitudes of North America before the interchange. Insofar as these predictions can be tested, they appear to be upheld.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-76
Author(s):  
V. G. Kaplin

The review of literary sources on ecology, biology, distribution of bean bruchid ( Acanthoscelides obtectus ) and its main food plant - Phaseolus vulgaris in North and South America; Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and more details in Russia; the influence of abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic factors on the invasive process, phytosanitary condition of common bean crops in Russia is presented. Some aspects of the invader management are shown. The main stages and areas of cultivation of common bean and invasion of bean bruchid from their primary habitat in South America and in the south of North America are traced; the vectors and reasons causing them are considered. In Russia, the economic importance of bean bruchid has increased since the mid-1980s, which coincided with the climate warming; there was an expansion of its distribution in the eastern and north-western directions. At the last decades of the 20th century, it had penetrated in Smolensk and in the south part of the Tver and the Tomsk regions. With the increase in production of beans in Russia, the lack of systemic protection from bean bruchid and further increase of climate warming will contribute to the extension of its range to the north in the European part of Russia and the Urals to 57-58° N. Lat., where the conditions of the summer period are favorable for development of common bean and bean bruchid. To the east, it may spread to Tyva, Buryatia, the Trans-Baikal territory, the Amur region, the Jewish Autonomous region, and the southern part of the Khabarovsk territory. With the introduction of strict internal quarantine and a system of protection of common bean from this pest, which prevents the spread of infected dry bean, on the contrary, it is possible to reduce the distribution range of the bean bruchid, with its disappearance in the Siberian, Ural districts, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan.


1915 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
F. A. Kirkpatrick

An official account of the Indies states that in 1574 there were 200 Spanish settlements or towns (pueblos de Españoles) in Spanish America, some of them ranking as cities, others as villas (i.e. boroughs or towns); 100 of these were in South America. Here is an extract from the book:—‘The city of Popayan is 22 leagues from the city of Cali, which bounds it on the North; and 20 leagues from Almaguer, which bounds it to the South. It has 30 Spanish householders (vecinos), of whom 16 are encomenderos. Its district contains 32 villages or divisions of Indians, with 9000 tributary Indians, divided into 19 repartimientos, 3 of them tributary to the king, the rest to individuals.’


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolivar Paredes-Beltran ◽  
Alvaro Sordo-Ward ◽  
Luis Garrote

<p>We present a continental-scale evaluation of the distribution of dams and reservoirs in South America. This analysis is relevant to estimate potential impacts on water supply and flow alteration. A combined total of 808 of the largest dams across the continent, which can store about 1,003 cubic kilometres of water, were evaluated. We divided the area of study into 27 hydrological regions and for each region we determined necessary inputs to assess the potential impacts of dams and reservoirs such as: total area, mean annual runoff, total storage volume, population, or equipped area for irrigation. Although the storage capacity of the reservoirs represents around 10% of the region's total mean annual runoff, the potential impacts for flow alteration differ considerably between hydrological regions because dams and reservoirs are not evenly distributed in South America. Whilst in some hydrological regions in the north, including the Amazon river, water storage from reservoirs represents less than 5% of their mean annual runoff, some hydrological regions in the south of the continent can store the equivalent of 2 to 3 years of their mean annual runoff. The region with the highest potential for hydrological impacts is the Rio Colorado basin in Argentina, where storage from reservoirs can be almost 3.5 times the region’s mean annual runoff. The observed variations in water storage can be explained by the diversity in hydrology and water demands of the different hydrological regions of the continent. For example, water storage for hydropower purposes represents about 85% of the total water storage in the continent. Also, the highest number of dams exclusively allocated for hydropower production are located in the east of the continent in Argentina and Brazil. The hydrological region with the highest ratio of water storage is “La Plata” in the southeast of the continent with approximately 35% of the total water storage of the continent.  In addition, almost 70% of dams are located in humid or sub-humid areas. In average, the dams in the continent can store 9,700 m<sup>3</sup> of water per person and 161,000 m<sup>3</sup> of water per hectare equipped for irrigation. The regions with the highest concentration of dams are Venezuela and the eastern region of Brazil, while the regions with the least number of dams per area are found in the northeast of Brazil and the south of the continent. These ratios may be useful to understand the potential effects of dams and reservoirs on a regional and continental scale, considering that development plans in several countries include many new dams across the continent. With this study, we expect to provide valuable insights to researchers and water resource managers about the current and future potential impacts of dams and reservoirs in South America.</p>


The Geologist ◽  
1863 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 204-207
Author(s):  
R. Lechmere Guppy

In the Report on the Geology of Trinidad the Government geologists described a series of sandstones and shales extending across the island from east to west, and occupying an extent of about 97 square miles. The distribution of the formation, which has been named the “Older Parian,” is in the manner of an irregular band of from 1 to 4 miles in breadth, traversing the island in an easterly direction from the Gulf of Paria at Pointe à Pierre. This band terminates rather abruptly before reaching the east coast, but the formation reappears here and there near the south coast along a line parallel to the main band. The formation is only exposed for a short distance on the shores of the Gulf of Paria; but it has been found to cover a large area, and to be extensively developed on the continent of South America. The fossils found by the geologists in Trinidad seem to have been few, and for the most part indeterminable. They however obtained fossils from the same formation at Cumana, in Venezuela; and these remains led to the belief that the Older Parian was probably of Neocomian age. During a short visit to Pointe à Pierre I obtained several fossils, which have enabled me to make the observations detailed in the present paper.The section given by the Government geologists of the Older Parian deposits at Pointe à Pierre is taken on the south side of the point, which I have not had an opportunity of examining carefully. The geologists do not seem to be able to give much attention to that portion of the deposits which is exposed on the north side of the point, and I hope that the present paper, in so far at least as it relates to the fossils, may in some measure supply the deficiency.


2000 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 201-204
Author(s):  
Vojtech Rušin ◽  
Milan Minarovjech ◽  
Milan Rybanský

AbstractLong-term cyclic variations in the distribution of prominences and intensities of green (530.3 nm) and red (637.4 nm) coronal emission lines over solar cycles 18–23 are presented. Polar prominence branches will reach the poles at different epochs in cycle 23: the north branch at the beginning in 2002 and the south branch a year later (2003), respectively. The local maxima of intensities in the green line show both poleward- and equatorward-migrating branches. The poleward branches will reach the poles around cycle maxima like prominences, while the equatorward branches show a duration of 18 years and will end in cycle minima (2007). The red corona shows mostly equatorward branches. The possibility that these branches begin to develop at high latitudes in the preceding cycles cannot be excluded.


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