Hello everybody!!

I am Erickson Urquiaga, I am from Peru, I am a biologist, my studies I did at Universidad San Antonio Abad del Cusco and Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina. I have special interest on ecology of tropical high mountain vegetation. How this plant communities will response to climate change and human impacts.

During my university studies I have participated in many projects focused on diversity, ecophysiology of plants in the Andes and their interactions with the environment. One of this projects catch my interest which is how the human activities (fires) affect the interactions between grassland and Andean forest.

Now I am focused to know if the climate change or human activities have more influence on distribution of the Andes treeline. I am also interested in the modelling of the future scenarios of vegetations under different climate change degrees. Propose instruments, policies to manage the conservation or mitigation the effects of the global warming on the Andes.

Respect to the course I have few goals, first is to learn all about functional traits, because this is a new topic to me. A second goal is to try to relate how the functional traits can react to face the climate change and global warming and third if it is possible distinguish the effects of climate change and human impact on functional traits. Finally I think that at the end of the course I will be able to understand how functional traits response to climate change. Also I would like to be able to propose some new ideas about the functional traits and their research.

The most excited part of the course is the opportunity to meet new people and to share experiences and learn about functional traits. Also to take contact with others realities around the world and their opinions.

The concept of climate change in Perú is largely know. Perú was identify as one of the places where the climate change will have extreme effects. Peoples opinion about climate change is divided. On one hand people from the inner country or people that is in contact with the environment like farmers they know that the climate change and global warming is happening. They constantly see how their fields are attack by insects where before did not exist. On the other hand people that live in the capital or big cities, they know about the climate change but they are not conscious about the problem that imply or they think that the effects of the climate change will not affect them.