{
  "id": "ecuador",
  "title": "Ecuador",
  "lang": "en",
  "source_lang": "en",
  "summary": "Ecuador is a country on South America's Pacific coast, straddling the equator and spanning four contrasting natural regions.",
  "category": "geography",
  "subcategory": "",
  "type": "place",
  "aliases": [
    "Republic of Ecuador",
    "República del Ecuador"
  ],
  "generated_at": "2026-10-09",
  "model": "pro/claude-haiku-5-5",
  "url": "https://aiwiki.page/en/ecuador/",
  "translations": {
    "zh-Hans": {
      "url": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/ecuador/",
      "json": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/ecuador.json"
    }
  },
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "",
      "text": "Ecuador is a country on the northwestern coast of South America, bordered by Colombia to the north, Peru to the south and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Its name comes from its position on the equator. Despite its small size, the country covers 283,561 square kilometers, making it one of the smaller nations in South America. Its territory includes the Pacific coastal lowlands, the high Andean corridor, the Amazon lowlands and the Galápagos Islands, which lie about 1,000 kilometers offshore. Because these zones differ so sharply in altitude, climate and ecology, the country is often described as a concentration of diverse landscapes within a compact area.\n\nEcuador's geography shapes nearly every aspect of its national life, including where people live, how rivers flow, how the economy develops and how the country is connected internally. The Andes divide the mainland into a western drainage toward the Pacific and an eastern drainage toward the Amazon basin. Its position on the tectonic boundary between the Nazca and South American plates produces active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Its location on the equator, combined with altitude and ocean currents, creates a wide range of climates. The country's biodiversity, which includes the lowland rainforest and the endemic species of the Galápagos, has made it important to the study of evolution and conservation.\n\nThis entry first describes the four natural regions and the Galápagos archipelago, then examines the geological, hydrological and climatic systems that link them. It goes on to cover ecosystems and biodiversity, population and settlement patterns, the historical background of human occupation, and the economic geography of resources and infrastructure. It closes with environmental pressures, the history of geographic exploration and research, and the present-day risks and open questions facing the country's landscapes and their inhabitants."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Location, Extent and Administrative Divisions",
      "text": "Ecuador occupies the northwestern corner of South America on the Pacific Ocean. Colombia lies to the north, with a 708 km border, while Peru lies to the east and south, along a 1,529 km frontier. The name reflects the fact that the equator runs through the territory: the Spanish word for the line is the source of the country's name. The national name refers to the Earth's equator passing very close to the city of Quito, crossing the country from east to west. Modern measurement has refined that line. GPS measurements later showed the true line about 240 m north of the monument that marks it.\n\nEcuador is small by continental standards. Its total area is 283,561 square kilometres, a figure that includes the Galápagos Islands. Sources differ on how that total is split between land and water. One reference gives 283,561 km² as land and 6,720 km² as water, while the CIA World Factbook gives 276,841 sq km for land alone, with the total of 283,561 km² including the islands. The mainland coast is 2,237 km long. The country's maritime claims are much larger than its land. It has the 29th largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 1,077,231 km², which includes the Galápagos Islands. Under the Factbook's listing, the EEZ extends to 200 nm, and Ecuador has also claimed a continental shelf extending to 350 nm measured from the baselines of the Galápagos archipelago.\n\nAdministratively, the Galápagos form a distinct unit. The islands lie about 972 kilometres west of the mainland coast, and they are administered as a province of Ecuador. Their island count varies by source: one embassy summary reports 13 main islands, five of which are populated, whereas another lists 127 total islands and 18 major islands, with a land area of 8,010 km².\n\nStandard descriptions divide the country into four natural regions, though the mainland is often treated separately from the islands. Mainland Ecuador is geographically divided into three natural regions: the Coastal Lowlands (La Costa), the Andean Highlands (La Sierra) and the Amazon Rainforest (El Oriente). The fourth is the insular region. The coastal zone comprises just over a quarter of the country, while the Amazonian zone extends over an area of 120,000 km², roughly 42 percent of the national total by my calculation. The provinces are assigned to these zones in practice. One embassy listing places Esmeraldas, Manabí, Los Ríos, Guayas and El Oro on the Pacific coast, Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua and Chimborazo in the northern Andes, and Sucumbíos, Napo, Pastaza, Orellana, Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe in the Amazon region. That listing also places Santa Elena among the mountain provinces, which is questionable since Santa Elena is normally counted as coastal. Because provincial boundaries are administrative rather than strictly topographic, some provinces take in more than one natural zone.\n\nThe regional divisions also reflect historical geography. Under Spanish rule, the territory was known as the Presidencia, or Real Audiencia, of Quito. The highland core of that jurisdiction became the country's main settlement zone, and the cultural contrast between highland and coast has deep roots. The Sierra had a strong Incan presence, whereas the Coast was sparsely populated by non-Incan populations. The rivalry between the two largest cities, the capital Quito in the highlands and Guayaquil on the coast, continues to shape regional politics. There is tension and general dislike between the residents of the highlands and the coast. When the state took its present name after independence in 1830, the fame brought to the region by the French Geodesic Mission influenced the adoption of the name Republic of Ecuador."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The Coastal Lowlands (La Costa)",
      "text": "The Costa is the western strip of mainland Ecuador, a plain between the Pacific and the Andean foothills that runs from the Colombian border in the north to the Peruvian frontier in the south. Its width changes markedly. It is widest, about 150 km, between Cabo San Lorenzo in Manabí and the Andean foothills, while in southern Guayas Province, east of the Gulf of Guayaquil, it narrows to roughly 15–20 km. A low coastal range, the Cordillera Costañera, runs from Esmeraldas to Guayaquil and splits the region into an outer Costa, facing the sea, and an inner Costa, bordering the Andes. Sources disagree on elevation: the lowlands are variously put at no more than 200 m or as high as about 500 m, while the coastal ranges rise to about 1,000 m.\n\nRivers that flow from the Andes to the Pacific cross the lowlands, and two systems stand out. In the north, the Esmeraldas begins in the Quito basin as the Guayllabamba, flows west down the Andean slopes, and reaches the sea near the city of Esmeraldas after about 210 km. In the south, the Guayas forms just north of Guayaquil where the Daule and Babahoyo rivers meet. Estimates of its drainage area range from about 32,000 to 40,000 km², and its mean discharge is the largest of the coastal rivers, accounting for a large share of total discharge from the region. Steamers can reach Guayaquil even in the dry season, and the river then spreads into a braided delta of islets before entering the Gulf of Guayaquil on either side of Puná Island. Most other coastal rivers, including the Cayapas, Naranjal, Jubones and Santa Rosa, are shorter, and many in the outer Costa are intermittent, carrying water mainly during the December-to-May rains and drying out in the dry season. Perennial rivers that rise in the Andes are the main exception, and in the inner Costa rivers commonly flood in the wet season and form swamps.\n\nVegetation follows two gradients: rainfall declines from north to south and from the mountain tops to the beach. In the north, the Mache-Chindul range carries wet Chocó rainforest, and annual rainfall in parts of the western moist forest exceeds 7,000 mm. The Jama-Coaque range sits at the midpoint of this gradient, with peaks within about 8 km of the sea. Further south, the Chongón-Colonche range supports drier deciduous forest, with cloud forest on its summits. The Ecuadorian dry forests, a Tumbesian ecoregion that extends into northern Peru, once covered much of the southwest, but only about 1% of the original forest survives. On the Santa Elena Peninsula, annual rainfall is generally below 300 mm and the dry season lasts about nine months, producing arid scrub. Semi-deciduous forest formerly covered much of the central coastal plain. Mangroves are most extensive in northern Esmeraldas, around the estuaries of the Santiago and Cayapas rivers, where some Rhizophora trees exceed 30 m. A second large mangrove belt lines the Gulf of Guayaquil, and smaller stands occur along the Manabí coast.\n\nThe coastal economy rests on agriculture, aquaculture, fishing and port activity. The Guayas floodplain is among the most fertile and accessible lands in the country and supplies much of the national banana crop, while bananas, rice, sugarcane, cacao and African palm are grown on a large scale. Shrimp farming has become the defining coastal industry. A 2022 official count recorded about 4,090 farms covering roughly 218,000 hectares, with around 60% of production in Guayas and about 20% in El Oro. Expansion has come at a high cost: in the Guayas estuary, shrimp ponds grew from about 30,000 hectares in 1985 to 64,000 hectares in 2014, and much of the pond area occupies former mangrove sites, which shrank by roughly 20,000 hectares over the same period. Fishing is concentrated at Manta, a major centre for tuna and fish canning. Guayaquil, on the Guayas, is the country's principal port and handles most container traffic, while Puerto Bolívar in El Oro and Esmeraldas also serve banana and shrimp exports."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The Andean Highlands (La Sierra)",
      "text": "Cordilleras and intermontane plateau\n\nThe highlands follow the Andean chain as it runs through the country. In the north, the Ecuadorian Andes are divided into three parallel cordilleras which run in what is similar to an S-shape from north to south: the western, central (Cordillera Real) and eastern. Other descriptions count only two main ranges, the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental, which enclose a central highland valley system known as the Avenue of the Volcanoes. The depression between the two principal ranges is a structural feature: a north-northeast-oriented structural depression that separates the Western and Eastern Cordilleras. Between the ranges, the surface of the intermontane plateau sits at roughly 3,000 metres, a plateau reaches an altitude of three thousand meters.\n\nMajor peaks\n\nThe highest summit is Chimborazo, a stratovolcano whose figures vary by source. One summit is listed at 6,263.47 m (20,549.4 ft), while another account gives 20,702-foot (6,310-meter) Whymper, the highest point. Its prominence over the plateau is considerable: Chimborazo's summit rises 2,500 m (8,202 ft) above the surrounding highlands. Its neighbour Carihuairazo is 5,018 m (16,463 ft) high. Other notable summits include Cotopaxi, at 5,897 metres (19,347 ft). Because of the equatorial bulge, Chimborazo is also the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre, even though it is lower than Everest above sea level (2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's center than the summit of Everest).\n\nAltitude zones\n\nElevation organises the highlands into distinct belts. Montane forest and cloud forest occupy the lower slopes, while the páramo grassland begins above them. The páramo is found at elevations from 3,000–3,500 metres (9,800–11,500 ft) to the snow line at 5,000 metres (16,000 ft), islands of grasslands and shrubs surrounded by a sea of cloud forest lower down. This grassland is a páramo ecosystem whose climate is known for daily fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and they often undergo a sudden and drastic change in weather in which they fluctuate between temperatures from below freezing to 10 °C (50 °F). Above the páramo, the permanent snow and ice zone begins, where glaciers persist on the highest peaks.\n\nBasins and settlement\n\nThe enclosed basins between the cordilleras form the core of the highland landscape. The Paute basin in southern Ecuador is a useful example: it is located in the inter-Andean depression between the western and the eastern Andean escarpments of southern Ecuador, its elevation range varies from 900 to 4200 m a.s.l., and around 40% of the basin is covered by páramo. Because basin floors are sheltered and fertile relative to the surrounding peaks, they have long supported farming and dense settlement. Quito lies in the north-central part of the country in the Andean highlands, and the cities of the Chimborazo area, such as Riobamba, Ambato and Guaranda, lie within roughly thirty kilometres of the mountain. The enclosed basins also shaped the growth of urban centres, as valley sites supplied water, arable land and routes between them.\n\nNorthern and southern sections\n\nThe northern and southern Andes differ in form and climate. In the south, the cordilleras are not well defined, which makes the relief more irregular. Rainfall also contrasts with the north. On the páramo, average annual rainfall varies quite widely (from 700 to 4000 mm) because the rainfall dynamics are influenced by both the Pacific Ocean and the Amazon basin, and these influences vary with latitude. In a high-elevation southern catchment at 3,780 m, a 36-month record gave an average annual rainfall during this period was 1345 mm. The vegetation zones also belong to different ecoregions: the páramo of the northern Andes runs from north central Colombia along the cordilleras south to central Ecuador, while the Cordillera Central páramo covers the upper regions of northern Peru and southern Ecuador."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The Eastern Lowlands (El Oriente)",
      "text": "The Oriente, the Spanish name for the Amazonian part of Ecuador, starts where the eastern flank of the Andes falls away toward the lowlands and runs east to the borders with Peru and Colombia. Its six provinces are Sucumbíos, Orellana, Napo, Pastaza, Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe. Estimates of its extent vary with the definition used, but the region covers roughly 120,000 square kilometres, and some definitions treat it as close to half of the national territory. Its population is small. Estimates place the number of residents at roughly 500,000, or about 3 to 5 percent of the country, depending on the source and the year of the count. Unlike the coast and the highlands, the Oriente is defined less by a single climate or landform than by the drainage of the Amazon basin, which gives it its Amazonian character.\n\nThe transition from the mountains to the lowlands happens over a short horizontal distance. On the eastern slopes, elevation drops quickly, and the forest changes from montane and cloud forest in the foothills of the Cordillera Oriental to lowland tropical rainforest on the flat floodplains. Protected areas in the foothills, including Sangay, Podocarpus and Sumaco–Galeras, mark this zone. Lower down, temperatures stay warm year-round, with mean annual values of about 25 to 26 °C, and humidity remains high. Rainfall is heavy, and the region's soils are generally weathered and nutrient-poor, though alluvial deposits along the rivers are more fertile. Those soil and climate conditions shape where people can farm and where forest remains intact.\n\nRivers organize the region far more than roads do. The Napo, the longest and most important river in the Oriente, rises in the highlands of Tungurahua and Cotopaxi and gathers the Coca, Aguarico and Curaray before crossing into Peru, where it joins the Marañón to form the main stem of the Amazon. In places it is more than a kilometre wide, and its muddy, sediment-laden flow constantly reshapes its banks, cutting into clay bluffs and leaving oxbow lakes. The Pastaza, which descends from the Andean valleys, flows through the Pastaza province and into the Marañón, while the Morona and Santiago drain the south. Historically, these channels were the main routes for travel and trade, and most settlements were built along their banks. The modern road from Baños that follows the Pastaza into the lowlands is itself a recent development, and it is one of the few paved links into the region.\n\nSettlement has long been sparse and uneven. Indigenous peoples, including the Waorani, Kichwa, Shuar, Siona-Secoya, Cofán and Achuar, have occupied the region for centuries, and their collective territories shape how land is used and who may access it. Many Indigenous groups kept a cautious distance from mestizo and white settlers, partly because of a long history of violence that extended into the early twentieth century, when rubber extraction involved the forced removal of Indigenous people. From the 1970s and 1980s, state land policies encouraged settlers from the coast and highlands to move into the lowlands, which expanded the population of the northern provinces considerably. Territorial conflicts between settlers, Indigenous communities and extractive industries have continued since then.\n\nThe Oriente is also distinct in its economic and logistical position. Its main exploited resources are timber and petroleum. A Texaco-Gulf consortium discovered oil there in 1967, and production began in 1972, which brought roads, pipelines and production sites into previously remote forest. Oil wells and pipelines have also led to repeated spills and contamination of soils and waters, and many of the oil blocks overlap Indigenous lands. Access remains a challenge. Steep slopes, flooding and the dispersal of communities along rivers make road building costly, so air travel and river transport remain important for remote settlements and for the movement of supplies."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The Galápagos Islands",
      "text": "The Galápagos archipelago lies in the Pacific roughly 1,000 kilometres west of mainland Ecuador, straddling the equator. It is a group of 19 volcanic islands, and the islands are a marvel of geological activity. The archipelago sits on the Nazca Plate, which carries the seafloor eastward over a fixed volcanic hotspot. Each eruption created a new island, resulting in the archipelago we see today. The islands therefore step in age from west to east. The largest and youngest islands, Isabela and Fernandina, are less than one million years old, while the oldest islands, Española and San Cristóbal, are somewhere between three and five million years old. Isabela is an exception to the single-volcano pattern: each major island, with the exception of the largest island, Isabela, consists of a single large volcano. Isabela was formed when six volcanoes joined above sea level. Volcanic activity has not ended. The westernmost islands remain the most active, and eruptions periodically reshape their landscapes.\n\nIsolation and endemism\n\nBecause the islands rose from the ocean floor, they had no native life at first. All organisms presently living on the islands are the descendants of those that came from the South American mainland. Colonists arrived by sea, by air and on floating debris, and then faced the long distances between islands and from the continent. The result is a high proportion of species found nowhere else. The archipelago's isolation produced famous examples such as marine iguanas, flightless cormorants, giant tortoises, huge cacti, endemic trees and the many different subspecies of mockingbirds and finches. Endemism is strongest in the sea, where 2,909 marine species have been identified with 18.2% endemism.\n\nReptiles and birds show this pattern especially clearly. The Galápagos land iguanas, marine iguanas and giant tortoises belong to lineages that diverged from relatives on the mainland and then split into island-specific forms. Among birds, the Darwin's finches are the best-known case of descendants of one ancestor evolving through adaptive radiation into several species as they adapt to different conditions on various islands. Small differences in diet, beak shape and habitat separated populations on neighbouring islands.\n\nDarwin and the study of evolution\n\nThe islands are closely linked with the history of evolutionary biology. In 1835, Charles Darwin spent five weeks exploring the Galapagos aboard the HMS Beagle. He collected plants, animals and rock samples and visited several islands, including Isabela, where he studied the lava flows and found the marine and land iguanas. Darwin observed that closely related birds and reptiles differed from island to island, even when the islands were close together. His observations of species, such as the finches adapted to different islands, inspired his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's groundbreaking ideas were cemented in his book On the Origin of Species, forever linking the Galapagos to the study of evolution. In later decades, the islands became a standard site for research on speciation, adaptation and island ecology. The Charles Darwin Research Station, which the WWF helped to fund, supports this ongoing scientific work.\n\nHuman settlement and tourism\n\nHuman settlement on the islands is recent and concentrated. The Galápagos are a province of Ecuador, divided into cantons. The three most populated islands in the chain are San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz, and Isabela, and most residents live in towns on these islands. The Galápagos' population has increased from roughly 3,000 in the 1960s to about 30,000 in 2012. The Galapagos National Park was formally established in 1959, and encompasses 97% of land in the archipelago. Settlement is therefore limited to a small share of the land, and the surrounding marine area is also protected.\n\nTourism is the main economic engine and also the largest source of pressure. Tourism has grown since the archipelago joined the UNESCO MAB system, rising from 16,000 visitors in 1981 to over 330,000 in 2023. Ecuador restricted the size of the cruise fleet in 1998, which limited ship-based passengers, but land-based tourism has expanded rapidly, straining infrastructure and natural resources. Growth in visitors and residents raises demand for water, energy, waste management and food, and much of the food must be imported from the mainland. Invasive species are among the most serious risks, because invasive species, IUU fishing, increasing tourism, plastic pollution, urban population pressure and climate change all threaten the islands' values. Tourism also declined in 2024 amid concerns about violence on the mainland, which hurt local guides and farmers, showing how closely the local economy depends on visitor numbers."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Geology and Tectonic Setting",
      "text": "Ecuador's geology is shaped mainly by the Nazca Plate, an oceanic plate that moves eastward and dives beneath the South American Plate along the Pacific margin. This process, subduction, has produced the Andes and generates much of the country's seismic and volcanic activity. Along the Ecuadorian segment, the Nazca Plate underthrusts the North Andean Sliver, a block that is moving northeastward at about 4.7 centimetres per year. The subduction geometry changes along the margin. Southern Ecuador is influenced by the flat slab of Peru, where the plate runs nearly horizontal before it sinks, while central Ecuador is characterised by a steeper, more conventional descent into the mantle. Seismic tomography also suggests that the slab has tears, including one at the northern edge of the Peruvian flat slab.\n\nA major feature of the incoming plate is the Carnegie Ridge, a chain of submarine volcanic seamounts and plateau crust formed by the Galápagos hotspot as the Nazca Plate moved over it. The ridge is buoyant and thick, and it is now colliding with the continental margin near the centre of the country. Its subduction increases the coupling between the two plates, which is linked to unusually high deformation in northern Ecuador and to the northward-directed motion of the North Andean Sliver. The ridge's collision is also associated with coastal uplift and volcanism.\n\nEcuador's volcanic arc forms part of the Northern Volcanic Zone of the Andean Volcanic Belt, which extends through Colombia and Ecuador. Counts vary by catalogue. The Instituto Geofisico considers about 27 Ecuadorian volcanoes potentially active, including those in the Galápagos, while the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program lists 22 volcanoes, of which 15 have erupted in the Holocene or in recorded history. The most frequently active mainland volcanoes include Sangay, Tungurahua, Cotopaxi and Reventador. Chimborazo, at about 6,261 metres, is the highest peak. The volcanic ash that blankets many highland slopes has created fertile soils, which in turn supports dense agricultural settlement.\n\nEcuador's faults fall into several groups. The main active fault zones include strike-slip faults that run roughly parallel to the Andes, two major southwest-northeast dextral systems called the Pallatanga and Chingual faults, and north–south reverse faults such as the Quito Fault System. Earthquakes are commonly grouped by origin. The largest events are megathrust earthquakes on the subduction interface, which can produce destructive tsunamis; the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia event, with a magnitude of about 8.8, is among the largest ever recorded. Within the South American Plate, faulting has produced the most damaging shallow quakes, such as the 1949 Ambato earthquake. Earthquakes inside the subducting Nazca slab are usually deep and rarely cause heavy damage, though they are felt widely. Swarms of small quakes often accompany volcanic unrest, such as the Quito swarm of 1998–1999 linked to Guagua Pichincha.\n\nThe hazard is concentrated in the Inter-Andean Valley, where Quito sits at about 2,800 metres, roughly 180 kilometres inland from the trench. The city lies in an intermontane basin filled with soft volcanic sediments, which amplify seismic waves, and it is crossed by reverse faults of the Quito Fault System. A 2014 earthquake of magnitude 5.1 triggered landslides that killed four people and briefly closed the airport. The 1797 Riobamba earthquake devastated the central highlands, and the 2016 Pedernales earthquake, magnitude 7.8, killed 658 people.\n\nThe Galápagos Islands have a different origin. They are oceanic volcanic islands rising from the Nazca Plate about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland, built over a hotspot rather than along the subduction arc. As the plate drifts eastward, the islands form in sequence, so the youngest and still-active volcanoes lie toward the west, while older islands sit farther east. Because they are not part of the continental margin, the islands are not subject to the continental-style compression, faulting and deep-seated seismicity that shape the mainland."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Hydrology and River Systems",
      "text": "The Andes divide Ecuador's drainage into two systems. Most of the country's rivers and streams have headwaters in the Andes and flow either westward toward the Pacific Ocean or eastward toward the Amazon River. This split is a continental divide in practice, and it is shaped by the wider geography of the continent, where the major basins lie east of the Andes, and the main rivers flow to the Atlantic Ocean.\n\nThe Pacific-draining rivers are short because of the local setting. Drainage to the Pacific differs because the Andes lie close to the Pacific coast and rainfall is scarce from southern Ecuador to central Chile. Consequently, the rivers are short, and few carry any large quantity of water. Two rivers stand out on the coast. The Esmeraldas begins as the Guayllabamba River in the Sierra, flowing west before emptying into the Pacific near the city of Esmeraldas. In the south, the Guayas system forms north of Guayaquil, where the Daule and Babahoyo rivers converge. Its basin is usually given as about 34,500 km² with an average discharge of 2,000 m³/s, although other studies report a smaller basin of about 32,890 km². The Guayas together with the Gulf of Guayaquil is the largest estuarine ecosystem on the Pacific coast of South America. The coastal estuaries and mangrove channels that surround these river mouths are shaped by the river inflow.\n\nThe eastern slopes drain into the Amazon system, which carries much larger volumes and sediment. The Napo is a good example. At 885 km, the Napo River is longer than all of the Amazon's large tributaries except the Trombetas. About 60 percent of the Napo Basin lies in Ecuador, and the other 40 percent is in Peru. Rivers descending from the Andes into the Oriente typically carry heavy sediment loads, which is characteristic of the Amazonian tributaries. Because these rivers reach the lowlands after long courses across the foothills, they serve as transport routes for the eastern region.\n\nWater supply in the highlands depends on glaciers and wetlands in the páramo zone. In the greater Quito area alone, around 5 million people depend on the water collected in the páramos and, to a lesser extent, in the glaciers of the surrounding mountains. The páramo acts as a storage system rather than a source of sudden releases. It gathers rainfall and cloud moisture, which is filtered through damp soils and slowly released into streams and rivers. By contrast, glacier melt can release large volumes of water abruptly. Glaciers can release enormous volumes of water in summer or under warming that can become life-threatening avalanches, while the páramo is a predictable water storage system. Estimates of the páramo's share of water supply vary by source. One study states that El Distrito Metropolitano de Quito relies on water from the northern Ecuadorian Andes, with at least 85% of its water supply coming from páramos. For the country as a whole, a conservation organization reports that these ecosystems provide 70 per cent of the water for communities near and far, while another source puts the figure for Colombia and Ecuador at up to 85-90% of drinking water.\n\nWater is used for both consumption and electricity generation. Water is used for consumption as well as electricity production. Flow in Ecuador's rivers varies strongly with the season. During the rainy season, which lasts from January to April, the rivers that drain into the Pacific flood and often cause damage. The seasonal range is large on the Guayas: the average discharge drops to about 200 m³/s in the dry season and rises to 1,600 m³/s in the wet season. The floods are an annual phenomenon on the Pacific coast of Ecuador and can become devastating during El Niño years. Human pressure on the páramo also affects this storage capacity. Climate change and human intervention, including mining, are a major threat to water security in the region."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Climate and Climatic Zones",
      "text": "Ecuador sits on the equator, but latitude alone does not explain its climate. Elevation does most of the sorting. Across the central uplands, temperature falls as the land rises, so a single equatorial latitude produces very different conditions from the coast to the snowline. In the highlands, days can be hot and bright all year while nights turn bitterly cold. The central part is crossed by the Andes and is therefore more or less cold depending on altitude. Rain and hail occur at any time and quite suddenly. The highland dry season generally falls between June and September, with warmer, wetter weather from December to March.\n\nWest of the mountains, the cold Humboldt Current reshapes the lowlands. Its chilled water limits evaporation, so the coast often lies under overcast skies rather than building towering storms. The Humboldt Current lowers evaporation and produces cooler, overcast conditions, while the Panama Current increases moisture and rainfall from December to May. The result is a clear seasonal rhythm: a rainy season that peaks in the early months of the year, followed by a cooler, drier period. Rainfall also falls off sharply from north to south. Published figures differ between sources, but near the Colombian border annual totals can exceed 3,000 mm, while the southwestern desert fringe near Peru receives less than 250 millimeters. Vegetation follows this gradient, changing from humid forest in the north to savanna and desert scrub in the south. Warm water from the north is what keeps the northern coast humid, in contrast to the cold-water aridity farther south.\n\nEast of the Andes, the eastern foothills are among the rainiest places in the Amazon basin. Their windward slopes receive about 4,000–7,000 mm per year, a result of moisture carried from the Atlantic, evapotranspiration from the forest, and the steep relief of the mountains. Humid air from the lowlands is pushed upslope by the tropical easterlies, and as it rises it releases its water. The Andes block the movement of warm, moist air from the east, so heavy rain falls through much of the year, and the runoff feeds the Amazon's tributaries. Timing varies within the region. In southern Ecuador, the eastern slope has a unimodal regime with a peak in the June-August period, while in the northern foothills convection is developed and organized into MCSs during the night, with rainfall peaking in the early hours of the morning. The Amazonian lowlands further east are a humid tropical rainforest climate, facing extremely high rainfall and minimal seasonal variation. There is rainfall every month, meaning there is no official dry season. Frequent cloud cover further reduces direct sunshine there.\n\nClimate variability is dominated by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which alters the ocean conditions that drive coastal rainfall. When warm water spreads along the coast, it brings humid, rain-heavy conditions to the north. The 1997–98 event is the clearest recent example. A national meteorological report recorded precipitation showing an increase of approximately 1,000 per cent, compared with the normal rainfall average for that period. Floods, sea surges and mudslides continued during the first weeks of January 1998, and the disaster caused substantial loss of life and displacement. The agricultural toll was also heavy. Hectares of bananas, shrimp farms, cocoa, rice and pastures were affected in the coastal provinces. In the highlands, the same event brought irregular rains with historical high and low levels recorded in some areas, and freezing temperatures at night, which damaged crops. Floods were not the only risk. Landslides in the foothills of the mountains and in the inter-Andean region occur more often due to the saturation of water in unstable, often deforested, slopes. The opposite phase also matters: during La Niña, the strengthened Chocó low-level jet can carry large amounts of atmospheric moisture from the far eastern Pacific onshore, contributing to floods along the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador.\n\nThe phenomenon is active again. In October 2026, the national hydrometeorological agency warned that residents of the coastal and littoral region should be prepared for this pattern to continue through the end of the year and possibly into 2027, with high rainfall expected in coastal provinces such as Esmeraldas, Manabí, Guayas and Los Ríos."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Biodiversity and Ecosystems",
      "text": "Ecuador's small territory sits within two recognized biodiversity hotspots, the Tumbes–Chocó–Magdalena region and the Tropical Andes, and its species richness is high for its size. Published totals differ. The World Land Trust counts over 18,000 species of vascular plants, 350 reptile species, and 669 amphibian species, while a general reference overview gives almost 20,000 species of plants, 1,500 species of birds, 341 species of mammals and more than 840 species of reptiles and amphibians. Birds are a common measure of this richness. One trust reports about 1,624 species, 18% of the world's species, and the figure includes many endemic and threatened forms.\n\nIn the Amazonian lowlands east of the Andes, a travel guide asserts that the forest protects more species of plant and mammal than any area of similar size. Within the region, Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, protects vast tracts of intact Amazon rainforest, and its fauna is noted for birds, amphibians, insects and large mammals. Recorded mammals include three-toed sloth, black-mantled tamarin, nine-banded armadillo, capybara, agouti, coati, tapir, and the elusive jaguar. Waterways add to the total: rivers home to over 800 species, including piranhas. Seasonally flooded forest in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve concentrates aquatic and semi-aquatic animals, including river dolphins and caimans (a premier Amazon wildlife-viewing area centered on seasonally flooded forests, lagoons, and blackwater rivers that concentrate aquatic and semi-aquatic fauna).\n\nThe cloud forests on the western Andean slope form a band of humid mid-elevation habitat. The Andean Chocó cloud forest, proposed for UNESCO listing in Pichincha province, ranges from 560 to 2,450 meters above sea level. This elevation span produces varied microclimates and a particular concentration of bird, amphibian, and insect biodiversity. The same proposal links the altitudinal gradient to endemism, which is also tied to complex topography and microclimates. Cloud forests also have a hydrological role. The forests of the Tumbes–Chocó region intercept and transform coastal humidity and cloud cover into precipitation that feeds the complex system of rivers and streams. Because of their restricted extent, these forests are regarded as a rare and vulnerable subset of tropical montane forests.\n\nAbove the forest line lies the páramo, which the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew describes as the most biodiverse high-altitude ecosystems distributed along the misty Neotropical Andean mountain range. Its best-known plants are the frailejones, shrubs of the genus <i>Espeletia</i>, which occur in the tropical mountains of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela (endemic to the tropical mountains of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). The plants are adapted to harsh conditions: they cope with scorching sunlight during the day and freezing temperatures at night. Water is central to their ecology. As clouds sweep up the mountainsides and create fog, tall frailejones shrubs, paper trees and other vegetation collect droplets on their leaves and direct the water down their trunks and stems into the spongy páramo soil. Because of this function, páramos are commonly described as \"water factories\", and in Ecuador and Colombia they are reported to provide 70 per cent of the water for communities near and far. Fire and grazing threaten them. In January 2024, a blaze at El Ángel in Carchi province burned more than 1,600 hectares of páramo before it was brought under control, and unsustainable ranching and agriculture practices erode and compact the soil, destroying its ability to store and supply water.\n\nThe coast shows a north–south change in forest type. The northern section, which continues the Chocó rainforest of Colombia, is extremely wet, receives eight meters of annual rainfall and has a diversity per hectare of as many as 300 tree species. Further south, the dry forests of southwestern Ecuador and northern Peru are dominated by large, emergent trees of the family Bombacaceae, including the ceiba. These forests support high levels of endemism and are extremely threatened. The hotspot's coastal units also include Gulf of Guayaquil–Tumbes mangroves, Manabí mangroves, and the Guayaquil flooded grasslands. Mangroves function as nursery habitat for many fish and shellfish species and stabilize shorelines against erosion and storm surge, which links the mangrove belt directly to coastal fisheries. Losses have been severe. One widely cited estimate holds that approximately 98% of native forest in coastal Ecuador has been cleared, and a separate study reports more than 85% habitat loss in the Ecuadorian Chocó, mainly from livestock, agriculture, fires and urbanization. The deforestation pressures and the protected areas that respond to them are discussed in other sections."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Population Distribution and Urban Geography",
      "text": "Ecuador's population is unevenly spread across its natural regions. The 2022 census counted 16,938,986 residents, and a version adjusted for undercounting puts the 2022 total at 17,677,303. Most people live in two belts: the intermontane basins and valleys of the Andes and the western coastal strip. The eastern lowlands are far more sparsely settled, with the vast Oriente — representing nearly half the national territory — is home to only around 5 percent of the population.\n\nReasons for the pattern\n\nClimate, relief and farmland account for much of this distribution. Population distribution reflects the interplay of climate, topography, and agricultural potential. Fertile valleys between the Andean cordilleras supported dense communities long before the Spanish arrived, while the coastal plain grew through its farm output and port trade. Settlement history also shifted over time. For much of the national past, most people lived in the highlands, clustered in the more habitable hoyas. Land pressure then pushed migration toward the lowlands: from 1950 to 1974, however, large numbers of land-poor Sierra peasants migrated to the Costa, and by 1982 the lowland region had the largest regional population.\n\nThe urban transition followed a similar path. The urban population exceeded 50% of the total for the first time in the 1990 national census, and today urban residents now account for approximately 64 percent of the population. Scholars date the fastest phase of urbanization to between 1960 and 1980.\n\nGuayaquil, Quito and the urban system\n\nGuayaquil and Quito form the core of the national urban system. The city is located on the west bank of the Guayas River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Guayaquil. Its economic role rests on the port, and most of Ecuador's import/export goods pass through here. Guayaquil's growth was fastest in the 1950s, a response to the rise in banana cultivation on the coast. The city proper counted 2,650,288 people in 2022, while its metropolitan area is considerably larger; older figures from the 2010 census, still repeated in many guides, show a lower count of 2,278,691.\n\nQuito is the national capital and a highland city. It sits in a hoya at the foot of Mount Pichincha at an elevation that makes it the second-highest capital city in the world after La Paz in Bolivia. From the colonial period onward it developed principally as an administrative center. Its population expanded sharply during the 1970s, when Ecuador's oil boom of the 1970s generated rapid population growth in Quito during that decade. Metropolitan estimates for Quito vary by source, with one placing it at approximately 2.8 million.\n\nBeyond these two metropolitan areas, the system is made up mainly of smaller centers. A functional-urban-area study identified the two FUAs of metropolitan size are Guayaquil and Quito. There are 11 FUAs in the Coastal region, 13 in the Highlands, and 4 in the Amazon. Recent growth has come largely from smaller towns, as the highest increase of population in recent decades is mostly driven by the urban growth of small FUAs.\n\nSpatial organization of cities\n\nHighland cities occupy constrained intermontane basins and valleys, which limit their horizontal expansion, while coastal cities spread across low, flat ground. Rapid growth in Guayaquil produced informal settlements on land that was poorly suited for building. Another phenomenon affecting Guayaquil and Quito was the emergence of large squatter settlements on previously unoccupied marginal lands. In Guayaquil, the establishment of suburbio (the collective name for squatter settlements) in the marshy areas southwest of Guayaquil proper began in the 1960s.\n\nEthnic and cultural diversity\n\nEcuador's population is multiethnic, although the categories used to count it are contested. In the 2022 census, the majority of the population self-identified, according to their culture and customs, as mestizo (77.5%), followed by those who considered themselves Montuvios (7.7%), Indigenous (7.7%), Afro-Ecuadorians (4.8%), and white (2.2%). Self-identification has been the basis of census classification from 2001 onwards. The 14 Indigenous nationalities in Ecuador, totalling 1,301,887 people, are organized into local, regional and national groups. Indigenous organizations' own estimates are much higher: the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) believes that indigenous peoples comprise somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent of the total population. Differences of this kind have to do with questions of classification of Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples, including the self-identification of those who have intermarried with non-black or non-indigenous people, and those who live in urban areas.\n\nThe Montubio population, a separate category in the census, is linked to the coast. Montubio is the term used to describe the mestizo people of the countryside of coastal Ecuador, especially the provinces of Manabí, Guayas, and Santa Elena. Within the census, the share identifying as white fell from 6.1% in 2010 to 2.2% in 2022."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Human Settlement and Historical Geography",
      "text": "Early coastal and highland cultures\n\nSettlement in the territory began on the Pacific coast and in the Andean valleys several thousand years before the Inca. The preceramic period begins with the first human settlement at the end of the last glacial and continues until around 4200 BC. The Las Vegas culture of coastal Ecuador, which flourished between 8000 and 4600 BC, is one of the oldest cultures in the Americas. The later Valdivia culture occupied the Santa Elena peninsula between about 3500 and 1500 BC, and remains of the Valdivia culture were discovered in 1956 on the western coast of Ecuador by the Ecuadorian archaeologist Emilio Estrada.\n\nValdivia communities were sedentary farmers. Their houses were arranged in a circle or oval around a central plaza, and Valdivian inhabitants cultivated Indian corn (maíz), kidney beans (fréjol), cassava, cotton-plants and archira. They also navigated the seas and established a trade network with tribes in the Andes and the Amazon. Other coastal groups followed, and the Chorrera culture occupied present-day Ecuador's southern coast and spread to sections of the Manabí, Guayas, and Esmeraldas provinces. In the highlands, the Cotocollao culture inhabited the valley that is now the Quito area, where its people farmed corn, beans, quinoa and potatoes.\n\nInca expansion into the highlands\n\nThe Inca advance into what is now Ecuador came from the south in the late fifteenth century. The Emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui (ruled c. 1471-1493) began the conquest of Ecuador, encountering heavy resistance from the local chieftains. His son and successor, Huayna Capac (ruled c. 1493-1525) completed the conquest. The Cañari people had already lived in the Tumebamba area for at least 500 years before the arrival of the Incas. Huayna Capac built a complex of pukaras (hilltop fortresses) at Pambamarca to defeat the Cayambes, and according to Cabello de Balboa, Huayna Capac ordered the massacre of the male population of Caranqui in retribution for its resistance. That account comes from a single Spanish chronicler, so its details should be read with caution.\n\nTumebamba became the empire's northern administrative centre. Tumebamba was chosen by the Emperor Huayna Capac (ruled 1493–1525) to be the Inca northern capital. He expanded the empire into northern Ecuador and pushed its boundaries to the Ancasmayo River, the current border between Ecuador and Colombia. Imperial control relied on movement of people as well as roads. The Inca spread the use of Quichua as a lingua franca and ordered large forced migrations where resistance to their conquest was especially strong. The road network, known as the Qhapaq Ñan, stretching over 40,000 km, linked mountain, coast, and jungle, facilitating rapid troop movement, trade, and communication. Huayna Capac also renovated the famous road system of the empire, improving trade, communication, and transportation.\n\nSpanish colonial organization\n\nSpanish forces had taken Quito and effectively defeated the Inca armies by mid-1534. The modern city is dated to 6 December 1534, when the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar founded the city on the site of the indigenous settlement, giving it the full name San Francisco de Quito. Initially, control over Andean towns was distributed through the grants of encomienda, which allowed the Europeans to collect taxes and exact labor from the Andean villagers in return for providing military protection and religious instruction. To centralize Spanish control over these encomenderos, Francisco Pizarro established a governorship in 1534 over the region extending from Popayán in the north to Loja in the south and from the highlands to the coastal city of Guayaquil.\n\nCivil wars among the conquistadores delayed consolidation until 1563, when the crown formed an audiencia (high court) in the city of Quito to head the imperial bureaucracy. It was created by Royal Decree on 29 August 1563 by Philip II of Spain in the city of Guadalajara. Its jurisdiction included territories that today include Ecuador, parts of northern Peru, parts of southern Colombia and parts of northern Brazil. It was classified as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until 1717. The Spanish also concentrated their efforts in the sierra. They focused their sixteenth-century colonizing efforts in Ecuador in the sierra because of its gold reserves and large population of sedentary Indians, who were compelled to work on haciendas in the surrounding verdant valleys. Epidemics then reduced the population sharply: the population of the Quito area fell from between 750,000 and 1,000,000 in 1534 to about 95,000 in 1590, a loss of 85 to 90 percent.\n\nColonial routes and land tenure in modern settlement\n\nColonial and Inca choices shaped where people later lived. The Andean corridor held the administrative seats, the main roads, the haciendas and most of the population, while the coastal lowlands and the eastern forests were treated as secondary frontiers. The Inca empire collapsed swiftly, though the jungle lowlands in both the coastal region of Esmeraldas and the Oriente remained unconquered until late in the seventeenth century. Inca sites also shaped later towns: the Spanish city of Cuenca was built on the site of Tumebamba, although a portion of the Inca city is preserved at the archaeological sites of Pumapunku and Todos Santos. The hacienda system, which tied Indigenous labour to large estates, is one reason land ownership in the highlands remained concentrated in the colonial period."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Economic Geography: Resources, Agriculture and Industry",
      "text": "Ecuador's economic activity follows its physical geography closely. Oil fields lie in the eastern lowlands, export crops occupy the Pacific plain, and the Andean valleys support a different set of farming systems. Each zone supplies a distinct part of the national economy.\n\nPetroleum is the most consequential resource in fiscal and trade terms, though estimates of its share vary by year and by method. Crude oil exports accounted for 49% of the country's export earnings, and 21% of public sector revenues in 2019. By 2022, crude remained the leading export, accounting for 27% of total exports in value. A different series puts crude oil and related products at 36% of exports. The state firm Petroecuador is the country's top oil producer, accounting for an estimated 80% of Ecuador's output via its subsidiary Petroamazonas. Dependence on oil is structural rather than only cyclical: more than USD 4.8 billion of refined products were imported in 2022 because domestic refining capacity was insufficient. Oil rents also fell, from 16% of GDP in 2011 to 6.4% of GDP in 2021, after a sharp drop in crude prices. In 2024, one analysis noted that the suspension of drilling in Yasuní National Park, following a national referendum, has reduced production capacity by 12%.\n\nOn the Pacific plain, the crop mix is oriented toward export. Cash crops such as coffee, bananas, sugarcane, cacao, palm oil and rice are grown in the coastal plains. Bananas are the best documented case. Ecuador exported a record 378.41 million boxes of bananas in 2025, a 3.9% increase over 2024, and the volume is roughly one-third of all bananas traded globally. The industry expanded after 1948, when the government began issuing agricultural credits, tariffs, building ports and a highway on the coast. Most production occurs on private plantations, and these foreign companies form contract agreements with local Ecuadorian banana producers.\n\nShrimp is now the largest non-oil export. Full-year 2025 exports reached $7.47 billion, cementing shrimp as Ecuador's single largest non-oil export. Much of this is primarily farmed shrimp, produced in coastal ponds that compete with mangrove habitat for land and water. China continues to absorb approximately 55% of volume, though diversification toward the US, EU, and Japan is accelerating. Cacao is expanding rapidly. Exports were 375,720 MT in 2023, and the national exporters' association projects exceeding 623,000 metric tons in 2026. Growth has been driven by the CCN-51 variety, which produces roughly three times the output of traditional Nacional trees. Prices are volatile: cacao export value dropped 63.5% year-on-year in Q1 2026 to $441 million as prices corrected from a 2024 peak.\n\nIn the Andean highlands, altitude and temperature determine crop choice. Moderate and cooler temperatures in the sierra, or highland, are ideal for growing corn, maize, potatoes and beans. Farming in the cordilleras is typically organized by elevation: one Kichwa system in the Cotacachi Mountains spans an altitude ranging from 2 500 to 3 400 meters, and the different plateaus of the mountain at different altitudes are used to cultivate species with different needs. Maize is central to rural diets. In the highlands of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, floury maize is grown only in the highlands at around 418,000 ha, but its yield of floury maize is around three times below that of dent or semident maize. Above about 3,000 metres, farmers in Chimborazo and Tungurahua face extreme environmental pressures caused by glacial retreat and erratic rainfall. Conservation of native crops, including a seed bank in Cotopaxi, is one response to these pressures.\n\nBeyond these core sectors, the economy relies on a narrower industrial base and on the specialization that the three natural regions encourage. The main industries are petroleum, food processing, textiles, wood products, chemicals. Employment data from 2017 show that agriculture: 26.1%; industry: 18.4%; services: 55.5% of the labor force. Fish and shrimp together account for about 24 percent of exports, and fishing is concentrated on the coast. Tourism is strongest in the highlands, where farm-stay operators in Cotacachi and Loja cultivate over 30 native varieties of potatoes for visitors. Because the Sierra, Costa and Oriente differ so sharply in soils, climate and access, each region tends to specialize rather than compete for the same activities."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Transport, Infrastructure and Regional Connectivity",
      "text": "The Andes split mainland Ecuador into a narrow coastal strip and a highland core, so most overland routes must climb and cross the range. Within the country, the highland trunk road known as E35 carries the Pan-American Highway. Running south from the Colombian frontier near Tulcán, it links Quito with Ambato, Riobamba, Cuenca and Loja before reaching the Peruvian border It serves as the main highway through Ecuador and it passes through Rumichaca, Ibarra, Quito, Ambato, Riobamba, Cuenca and Loja before crossing into Peru through La Macara.. A connecting road ties the coastal trunk to E35 north of the capital Vía Colectora Quito-La Independencia connects El Troncal de Costa (E25) to El Troncal de la Sierra(E35). The coastal trunk runs in parallel with the highland road, passing through Santo Domingo, Quevedo and Machala El Troncal de Costa runs parallel to the Pan-American Highway through the Coastal Lowlands.. Some sections have been upgraded to four lanes, but the climb out of the coastal plain remains the main obstacle to fast travel Ecuador has managed to update some roads into four-lane freeways.\n\nOil moves in the opposite direction, from the Amazon to the Pacific, through pipelines that cross the Andes. The Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline System (SOTE) was planned after oil was found in the eastern region in 1967 and began operating in 1972 Shortly after the discovery of oil in the eastern portion of Ecuador in the Amazon region in 1967, the construction of the Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline system (SOTE) was planned. The pipeline commenced operations in 1972.. Passing through the Amazon, highland and coastal zones, it reaches a maximum altitude of 4,064 metres near Papallacta The pipeline traverses three natural regions of the country: Amazon, Sierra and Costa. It crosses the Andes mountain range near Virgen de Papallacta, where it reaches its maximum altitude of 4,064 meters.. The newer Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline (OCP) entered service in 2003 with a capacity of 450,000 barrels per day, and its central section runs north of Quito while the SOTE passes south The 295-mile, 450,000 bbl/d OCP mostly parallels the route of the SOTE Oil Pipeline, carrying oil from fields in the Amazon region to the Balao oil terminal on Ecuador's Pacific coast— although the two routes diverge in their central sections, with the OCP passing north of Quito and the SOTE passing south.. A private consortium operated the OCP until 2024, when it passed to the state company Petroecuador From its inception until 2024, the pipeline was owned and operated by OCP Ecuador S.A., a joint venture. A smaller product line carries fuels from the Amazon to Quito A third smaller pipeline, the Poliducto Shushufindi-Quito, uses the same route to transport gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas and jet fuel from the Amazon to Quito.\n\nThe corridor is geologically unstable. Landslides ruptured both crude lines in April 2020, and the cause was linked to ground failure rather than to the pipelines themselves Landslides ruptured both the SOTE and OCP pipelines in April 2020, resulting in one of Ecuador's worst oil spills.. Erosion driven by the Coca River has also threatened the SOTE, and engineers have built a short detour around the most exposed stretch It runs through one of the country's most unstable areas, which is also plagued by regressive erosion from the Coca River.. National press reports counted 47 ruptures of the SOTE between its opening and 2003 According to national Ecuadorian news sources, the SOTE pipeline ruptured 47 times from its inauguration date in 1972 to 2003, when the OCP pipeline was installed..\n\nRail has played a far smaller role. The national railway was conceived to join the Pacific lowlands with the highlands The railway system was devised to connect the Pacific coast with the Andean highlands.. The only line still in the network runs between Quito and Durán, a suburb of Guayaquil Alausí railway station in Alausí, Chimborazo Province, is located on the only railway in Ecuador, which connects Quito in the north and Durán (a suburb of Guayaquil) in the south.. Its best-known section, the Nariz del Diablo, uses switchbacks on a steep mountain side Using a system of switchback it enables the train to zigzag down a steep mountain. The train travels through the Andes where the track descends nearly 500 meters in just 12 kilometers.. Heavy rain during the 1997–98 El Niño damaged the line, and passenger numbers fell as the highway drew travellers away After many decades of service the railway was severely damaged by heavy rainfall during the El Niño in 1997 and 1998 and from general neglect as the Pan-American Highway siphoned off passengers.. Service between Quito and Guayaquil ended in 2020 Between 2013 and 2020, it was also on the route between Quito and Guayaquil, and the state took over the railway assets in January 2022 On 5 January 2022 the railway assets were transferred to the Ecuadorian State..\n\nPorts and airports link the country to global trade. Guayaquil is the country's largest port A central railroad connecting Guayaquil, the country's largest port, and Quito was the backbone of Moreno's plan., while the oil export terminal at Balao and the Esmeraldas refinery serve the northern coast The SOTE pipeline delivers crude from the Amazonas region to the Balao Terminal and Esmeraldas Refinery for export.. The main international airports are in Quito and Guayaquil, and flights from both cities also serve the Galápagos. Overland, the Pan-American route crosses into Colombia at the Rumichaca Bridge This international route connects to the national highway network on the Rumichaca Bridge in Nariño Department, which marks the international border between Colombia and Ecuador..\n\nThe eastern lowlands are served by fewer roads. The Amazon trunk road E45 runs about 700 km from the Colombian frontier through Puyo, Macas and Zamora, and transversal routes such as E20 and E30 cross the Andes from the coast toward the Amazon E45 Troncal Amazónica (Amazon Trunk) Colombia - Puyo - Macas - Zamora 701 km; E20 Transversal Norte (North Transverse) Esmeraldas - Quito - Puerto Francisco de Orellana; E30 Transversal Central (Central Transverse) Manta - Puyo. Because road access is limited, river and air travel remain important for many remote communities."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Environmental Pressures and Resource Extraction",
      "text": "Deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon has been driven less by oil wells than by the roads built to reach them. Access roads opened previously remote forest, and the settlement, farming and timber extraction that followed caused most of the clearing. Yale's Global Forest Atlas notes that most Amazonian forest loss began in the 1970s oil boom, when exploration roads were expanding. The resulting pattern has continued. Campaigners cite an estimate of about 475,000 hectares of primary Amazonian forest lost between 1990 and 2015, and the national environmental coordinating body CEDENMA places Ecuador among the five most deforested countries in Latin America. Newer pressures include contract farming of oil palm and balsa in areas such as the Via Auca and Via a Loreto roads, where balsa is grown for the wind-energy industry. Historically, clearing for crops affected the Andean slopes and the coastal lowlands first, and lowland rainforest was cut for production from the mid-twentieth century.\n\nOil contamination is the most contested legacy of extraction. Texaco, which later became part of Chevron, operated in the northeastern Amazon from 1964 to 1992, and its 1970s-era technology caused widespread pollution. Waste was discharged into unlined pits, and crude spills and wastewater have contaminated soils and rivers near communities such as San Carlos. Plaintiffs, including Indigenous Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Waorani communities, first filed suit in New York in 1993 and later pursued the case in Ecuador. In 2011 a provincial court in Sucumbíos ordered Chevron to pay about US$9.5 billion, but the company has not paid and has contested the judgment in other jurisdictions. A 2025 arbitration award went in the opposite direction, ordering Ecuador to pay Chevron about US$220 million. Contamination is not confined to the Texaco era: the Yasuní National Park has hundreds of waste-oil pits, and in 2023 a national referendum voted that oil under the park should remain underground. Local lawyers have claimed that spills occur in the Amazon at a rate of more than 200 per year, a figure that has not been independently verified in the sources reviewed here.\n\nMining pressures are concentrated in the Andean highlands, where the environmental trade-offs are sharpest around water. The Loma Larga gold project, owned by Dundee Precious Metals, borders the Quimsacocha páramo near Cuenca, a wetland that supplies freshwater to the city and surrounding lowlands. A technical study commissioned by the municipal water utility argued that mining there posed serious and possibly irreversible risks, including acid mine drainage and arsenic contamination. In September 2025, more than 100,000 people marched in Cuenca against the project, and President Daniel Noboa announced moves to suspend its environmental licence. Similar conflicts have arisen elsewhere in the highlands, such as Las Naves, where farmers oppose the Curipamba gold and copper mine. Opponents warn that the tailings dam would outlast the mine's roughly ten-year operating life, and that mining threatens the streams on which agriculture depends. Land-use change from pasture and crop expansion on the slopes compounds these effects.\n\nCoastal pollution and habitat loss are concentrated in mangroves, estuaries and nearshore fisheries. Shrimp aquaculture is the principal driver of mangrove clearance; one advocacy estimate holds that more than 70 percent of the country's coastal mangroves have been eliminated, and the industry has moved into Esmeraldas province, which holds some of the most extensive mangrove stands. Converting mangrove forest to ponds removes nursery habitat for fish and shellfish, weakens natural protection against storm surge and erosion, and alters the salinity and sediment balance of estuaries. Effluent from aquaculture, agriculture and untreated urban wastewater adds further stress to the same tidal waters. Because many coastal communities depend on artisanal fishing and mangrove resources, these losses carry social as well as ecological costs."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Conservation, Protected Areas and Environmental Law",
      "text": "Protected areas and marine reserves\n\nEcuador's terrestrial and coastal conservation is organized through the National System of Protected Areas (SNAP). The SNAP comprises 68 protected areas occupying more than 18 million hectares, a little over 13.78% of the national territory. The system's oldest component is the Galápagos National Park. The park was the first national park created in Ecuador, in 1959. It protects about 7,970 square kilometers, roughly 97% of the archipelago's land surface. The park is administered by the Galápagos National Park Directorate under the national government.\n\nMarine reserves follow a different model. Their purpose is to limit the exploitation of marine resources, but because Ecuador is a country that depends on fishing, fishing activity is allowed in some marine reserves. The marine reserves are managed by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition. Compliance is enforced by ministry park rangers.\n\nThe Galápagos Marine Reserve and ocean protection\n\nThe Galápagos Marine Reserve is the largest element of this marine network. Ecuador established it in 1998, restricting fishing and other extractive activities in 12.4% of the waters surrounding the islands. Published area figures vary: one source gives around 133,000 km², while another counts the original reserve as 138,000 km². The reserve is the largest marine reserve in a developing country and the second largest in the world.\n\nLater expansions raised the national share of protected waters considerably. The Hermandad Reserve, formally created in January 2022, adds 60,000 km² and raised the protected share of Ecuador's ocean from 13% to 18.9%. Of the new area, 30,000 square kilometers lies on the Cordillera de Los Cocos, where no fishing may take place. The government has also tied these measures to a wider goal: Ecuador has committed to protecting 30% of its waters, and expanding the GMR is a step toward that target.\n\nRights of nature and environmental governance\n\nEcuador's 2008 constitution is the most distinctive element of its environmental law. When it adopted the new constitution in 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognize the legal personhood of nature, or Pachamama. The provisions appear in Article 10 and Chapter 7, Articles 71–74, which recognize ecosystems' inalienable right to exist and flourish, and require the state to remedy violations. The concept draws on the Andean Indigenous worldview of Pachamama (Mother Earth) and the principle of sumak kawsay, the \"good way of living.\"\n\nArticle 71 gives nature the right to maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, and allows every person, people, community or nationality to demand recognition of these rights before public bodies. Article 72 adds a right to restoration and requires the state to apply precautionary and restrictive measures against activities that could drive species to extinction or permanently alter ecosystems. In practice, the clause has provided a legal pathway for conservation, since any person can in principle act as a representative of the environment and file suit against harmful degradation.\n\nImplementation and the Yasuní-ITT case\n\nThe practical application of these principles has been contested. The Yasuní-ITT Initiative, announced in 2007, offered a test case. The government proposed a permanent ban on oil production in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini field, in exchange for 50% of the value of the reserves, or $3.6 billion over 13 years, from international contributions. The field was estimated to hold approximately 846 million barrels of crude oil, roughly 20% of the country's proven oil reserves. The area lies within Yasuní National Park, which the government created in 1979 and UNESCO declared a World Biosphere Reserve in 1989. In August 2013 President Correa canceled the initiative. He cited the lack of international support and approved oil drilling in the park. The episode shows the tension between constitutional commitments and the fiscal dependence on petroleum, which remains a major source of revenue."
    },
    {
      "heading": "History of Geographic Exploration and Scientific Research",
      "text": "The first large scientific expedition to measure the country was the French Geodesic Mission of the 1730s. Charles Marie de La Condamine, Pierre Bouguer and Louis Godin led the French team, working with Spanish geographers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. La Condamine was joined in his journey down the Amazon by Ecuadoran geographer and topographer Pedro Maldonado. The party arrived in Quito in June 1736 after splitting into several groups for the overland trek.\n\nThe mission's central aim was to measure an arc of the meridian at the equator and set it beside a survey carried out in northern Europe. Doing so let the team show that the planet bulges at the equator and is flattened at the poles, a conclusion they reached by comparing their arc with measurements in northern Europe. Its work contributed to the conclusion that Earth is flattened at the poles and broader around the Equator. Their arc ran from the plains near Quito to the southern city of Cuenca. The results later fed into the first accurate determination of the shape of the Earth, eventually leading to the establishment of the international metric system of measurement. The team also placed the equatorial line near Quito, at least approximately. Field measurements were complete by 1739, though problems with astronomical observations kept them in Ecuador several more years. The mission's renown is thought to have shaped the name adopted at independence: the fame brought to the region by the French Geodesic Mission appears to have influenced the adoption of the name, \"Republic of Ecuador\" when the country gained independence in 1830.\n\nSome six decades later, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt turned the Andes into a laboratory for ideas about nature. In 1802 he and Aimé Bonpland attempted Chimborazo, and their highest point, reaching an astonishing altitude of 5,878 meters – a world record that stood for three decades. From the volcanoes around Quito, Humboldt also challenged the view that sedimentation from a liquid had built the planet's surface; he refuted the Neptunists' hypothesis that the Earth's surface was formed by sedimentation from a liquid state, with conclusions drawn from his study of the Andean volcanoes. His altitude profile of Chimborazo, annotated with plant species and climatic readings, was widely copied by later mapmakers; Humboldt's eye-catching Tableau caught on quickly and inspired many imitations. Isotherms, which connect places of equal temperature, again showed how altitude and latitude affected the climate. Humboldt also compared mountain ranges by their tree limits, linking the Arctic, the Alps, and the Andean Chimborazo by treeline position: at sea level in the Arctic and rising to 4000-m elevation near the equator, with all climatic life zones rising in parallel. Alexander von Humboldt is often viewed as the father of ecology, and his methods shaped the study of mountain ecosystems.\n\nCharles Darwin's visit came about three decades after Humboldt's Andean journeys. Darwin sailed on the Beagle's voyage and reached the archipelago in 1835; he spent five weeks on the Galápagos Islands in 1835. Although his visit was short, the observations Darwin made and what he concluded about how evolution works made his trip one of the most famous events in the history of science. He noted that the species on the islands had a graded series of beak sizes and shapes with very small differences between the most similar. He also saw that these finches closely resembled another finch species on the mainland of South America. Back in England, the ornithologist John Gould identified all the birds as belonging to a single group, based on their anatomy and colorings, rather than several groups as Darwin had thought. Darwin's realisation that the different islands were home to different species led him toward a theory of descent. Considering the variations in beak size and use among the finches of the Galapagos, Darwin posited that these species all descended from one original species. That reasoning fed into his later work on natural selection and the origin of species. Today thirteen distinct species of Galápagos finches are adapted to living in different habitats and eating different diets. The group is a textbook case: the Galápagos finches are a classic example of adaptive radiation. Later field work confirmed selection in action; the Grants observed that after the drought, the average beak size went up by 4%.\n\nSubsequent research has broadened the picture well beyond finches. In the years since Darwin's visit, many other scientists and ornithologists have come to the Galapagos to study its finches. Later geological, botanical and zoological surveys of the mainland and islands built on these early accounts, and modern mapping now relies on aerial photography and satellite imagery, a far cry from the instruments carried by mule in the 1730s."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Contemporary Hazards and Open Questions",
      "text": "Ecuador's most populated areas sit on terrain that is still being reshaped by active volcanoes, faults and slope failures. Quito is the clearest case. The stratovolcano Guagua Pichincha rises immediately west of the capital, only 8 km from the city centre. A future eruption there could bring ash clouds, ash rain, pyroclastic flows, landslides and destructive mudflows called \"lahars\". Cotopaxi is considered by the national geophysical institute to be more dangerous than the more active Sangay, because of the possibility of a larger explosive eruption and the lahars that would follow if rapid melting of its glacier ice, combined with volcanic ash, sends large lahars down pre-existing valleys. Earthquakes are a parallel concern. The most damaging historical events have been associated with faulting within the South American plate, such as the 1949 Ambato earthquake. Deep quakes within the subducting Nazca plate are usually felt widely but are generally too deep to cause significant damage in Ecuador. The 1797 Riobamba earthquake remains one of the deadliest in South American history. Landslides are often the deadliest hazard in practice: landslides directly killed more than 1,642 people between 1970 and 2019, and recent fatal events include Chunchi (2021) and Alausí (2023), both in Chimborazo.\n\nAndean glaciers are shrinking, and this affects water supply directly. One review reports a glacial area loss of approximately 61% since the mid-1970s, with retreat rates differing between the Western and Eastern Cordillera. Retreat is uneven. Smaller, lower-altitude ice bodies are most exposed: the glacier on Carihuairazo has disappeared, and Iliniza Sur has lost over 80% of its ice cover. Estimates of how much water glaciers supply to cities vary. One monitoring-based figure holds that glacier meltwater provides 2% to 4% of Quito's total annual drinking water supply, while an older glaciologist's estimate, reported in 2006, put the share of Quito's water from surrounding ice caps at 70 percent. The gap reflects different methods and dates, and the two figures should not be read as settled. Where glaciers matter most is in dry seasons: at the Antisana basin, glacier melt contributes 24% of the annual runoff, and in droughts the use of glacier water triples. The loss of the Cotacachi glacier shows the downstream cost, with decreased agricultural and tourism sectors, biodiversity loss, and conflicts over water use.\n\nOn the coast, the main hazard is flooding linked to El Niño events. Across 2000–2024, floods accounted for 44.62% (29) of the 65 disasters that occurred in Ecuador, causing estimated economic losses of more than seven billion dollars. The two most significant El Niño episodes with good records were 1982–1983 and 1997–1998. Vulnerability is rising with population: the four provinces most susceptible to flooding, Los Ríos, Esmeraldas, El Oro, and parts of Guayas, added nearly 700,000 people between 2000 and 2010. Flood events on this coast are rarely caused by rainfall alone. Studies of communities in the south have found that flooding was associated with seasonal rainfall, El Niño events, high ocean tides, blocked drainage areas, overflowing canals, collapsed sewer systems, and low local elevation. A NASA analysis of a strong El Niño projected that places like La Libertad and Baltra in Ecuador could get up to three 10-year flood events in a single winter.\n\nRising sea levels add a longer-term layer. Guayaquil, on the west bank of the Guayas River, is among the cities cited as most exposed to sea-level rise; one mapping project ranks it fourth, and if sea levels reach 1 to 2 meters, as they are expected to by the end of the century, there won't be many affordable solutions available. The dense, low-lying urban fabric of the coast, together with the exposure of its estuaries and mangroves, means that El Niño floods and a higher baseline sea level could compound one another.\n\nThe unresolved questions are largely about trade-offs. Oil extraction, road building and agricultural expansion in the Amazon, the growth of visitor numbers in the Galápagos, and the mining and land conversion of the highlands all draw on the same landscapes that supply water, carbon storage and biodiversity. Whether protected areas can be enforced in a period of fiscal pressure, how urban growth in hazard zones can be limited, and how far highland water systems can adapt to shrinking glaciers without relying on the same dwindling sources are questions that remain open. The answers will shape both the country's exposure to natural hazards and the long-term viability of its most distinctive ecosystems."
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    "ocean",
    "plate-tectonics",
    "glacier",
    "urbanization",
    "estuary",
    "wetland",
    "deforestation",
    "latin-america",
    "charles-darwin",
    "earth",
    "natural-selection",
    "evolution",
    "el-nino-southern-oscillation",
    "sea-level-rise",
    "biodiversity"
  ],
  "sources": [
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "Map of Ecuador showing the tour coastal provinces of Esmeraldas,...",
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    },
    {
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      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/place/Guayas-River"
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    {
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
    {
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    },
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    },
    {
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    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuadorian dry forests",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian_dry_forests"
    },
    {
      "title": "Western Ecuador moist forests",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Ecuador_moist_forests"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Most Endangered Rainforest You’ve Never Heard Of - TMA",
      "url": "https://www.tma.earth/2021/09/15/the-most-endangered-rainforest-youve-never-heard-of/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shrimp Farms of the Guayas Estuary",
      "url": "https://www.naturalhazards.nasa.gov/images/153329/shrimp-farms-of-the-guayas-estuary"
    },
    {
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    },
    {
      "title": "Top 10 Ports in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.icontainers.com/us/2020/03/23/top-ten-ports-ecuador/"
    },
    {
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    },
    {
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      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/place/Ecuador/Agriculture-forestry-and-fishing"
    },
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    },
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    {
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      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo"
    },
    {
      "title": "Fast Facts About Chimborazo",
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    },
    {
      "title": "Carihuairazo",
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    },
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      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summits_farthest_from_the_Earth's_center"
    },
    {
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      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Andean_p%C3%A1ramo"
    },
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    },
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      "url": "https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/16/3/jhm-d-14-0135_1.xml"
    },
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    },
    {
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      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriente_(Ecuador)"
    },
    {
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    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "Pastaza Province",
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    },
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    },
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    },
    {
      "title": "1 OIL EXPLOITATION AND HEALTH IN THE AMAZON BASIN OF ECUADORa",
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    },
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    },
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    },
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    },
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      "title": "Synchronizing Histories of Exposure and Demography: The Construction of an Agent-Based Model of the Ecuadorian Amazon Colonization and Exposure to Oil Pollution Hazards",
      "url": "https://www.jasss.org/22/2/1.html"
    },
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    },
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    },
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      "url": "https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/visit-galapagos/about-galapagos/"
    },
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      "url": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1/"
    },
    {
      "title": "History of Galápagos",
      "url": "https://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/history/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Neoendemism",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoendemism"
    },
    {
      "title": "WWF’s work in the Galápagos Islands",
      "url": "https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/the-gal%C3%A1pagos/"
    },
    {
      "title": "“Rethink and reset” tourism in the Galapagos Islands: Stakeholders' views on the sustainability of tourism development - ScienceDirect",
      "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666957922000258"
    },
    {
      "title": "Full article: Navigating the Galápagos paradox: tourism growth management discourses in protected areas",
      "url": "https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2582669"
    },
    {
      "title": "Galápagos Islands",
      "url": "https://worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/node/957"
    },
    {
      "title": "When Hotspots Meet: The Galápagos Islands: A Hotspot of Species Endemism Based on a Volcanic Hotspot Centre",
      "url": "https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_23"
    },
    {
      "title": "UNESCO World Heritage Committee Once Again Sounds the Alarm Over Galapagos Tourism Growth",
      "url": "https://www.igtoa.org/blogs/unesco_raises_tourism_growth_concers"
    },
    {
      "title": "How Tourism and Population Growth Are Damaging the Galápagos - Travel And Tour World",
      "url": "https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/how-tourism-and-population-growth-are-damaging-the-galapagos/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Nazca Plate - an overview",
      "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/nazca-plate"
    },
    {
      "title": "Nazca Plate: Engine of Andean Formation",
      "url": "https://lacgeo.com/nazca-plate"
    },
    {
      "title": "Integrated geophysical model approach for Nazca Plate subduction in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11600-024-01440-1"
    },
    {
      "title": "Seismic imaging of the Northern Andean subduction zone from teleseismic tomography: a torn and fragmented Nazca slab",
      "url": "https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/236/1/593/7330215"
    },
    {
      "title": "GNSS Constraints to Active Tectonic Deformations of the South American Continental Margin in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8226875/"
    },
    {
      "title": "List of earthquakes in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "2023 Guayas earthquake",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Guayas_earthquake"
    },
    {
      "title": "Profiling the Quito basin (Ecuador) using seismic ambient noise",
      "url": "https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/228/2/1419/6388369"
    },
    {
      "title": "Interseismic Coupling on the Quito Fault System in Ecuador Using New GPS and InSAR Data and Its Implication on Seismic Hazard Assessment. - ADS",
      "url": "https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017AGUFM.T13E..05M/abstract"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador's Earthquake Vulnerability: Quito and Guayaquil at Risk",
      "url": "https://earthquakeradar.io/blog/ecuador-earthquake-vulnerability-quito-guayaquil.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Earthquakes in Ecuador — EarthquakeGlobe",
      "url": "https://earthquakeglobe.com/country/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Volcanoes in Ecuador - Active Volcanoes, Map & List (2026) - QuakeMate",
      "url": "https://quakemate.app/volcanoes-in/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Volcanoes: Volcanoes in Ecuador: Local Guide to All 84...",
      "url": "https://quitotrip.com/ecuador-volcanoes/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Volcanoes",
      "url": "https://naturegalapagos.com/blog/ecuador-volcanoes/"
    },
    {
      "title": "South America - Rivers, Amazon, Andes",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/place/South-America/Rivers"
    },
    {
      "title": "Guayas River",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayas_River"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Guayas Basin (boundary in purple) is located in the southwest...",
      "url": "https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Guayas-Basin-boundary-in-purple-is-located-in-the-southwest-Pacific-slope-of_fig1_311777603"
    },
    {
      "title": "Map of the Guayas River Estuary Ecosystem (GREE), Ecuador. Station...",
      "url": "https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-Guayas-River-Estuary-Ecosystem-GREE-Ecuador-Station-locations-are_fig1_246560659"
    },
    {
      "title": "Napo Basin",
      "url": "https://en.aguasamazonicas.org/basins/main-river-basins/napo-basin"
    },
    {
      "title": "In the Ecuadoran Andes, protectors of the páramos guard their water source",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/in-the-ecuadoran-andes-protectors-of-the-paramos-guard-their-water-source/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Living with the páramo",
      "url": "https://crew.global.ucsb.edu/news/living-paramo"
    },
    {
      "title": "Multitemporal Monitoring of Ecuadorian Andean High Wetlands Using Radar and Multispectral Remote Sensing",
      "url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/17/11/1637"
    },
    {
      "title": "Protection of the páramos in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.swissaid.ch/en/projekte/a-community-united-to-protect-its-ecosystem/"
    },
    {
      "title": "(PDF) Analysis of the Water Balance of Small Páramo Catchments in South Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226225301_Analysis_of_the_Water_Balance_of_Small_Paramo_Catchments_in_South_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Major Rivers Of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/major-rivers-of-ecuador.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador climate: temperature, rain, when to go - Climates to Travel",
      "url": "https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Climate in Ecuador: Two Main Seasons",
      "url": "https://www.chimuadventures.com/en-us/blog/climate-ecuador-two-main-seasons"
    },
    {
      "title": "Climate of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Frontiers",
      "url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00162/full"
    },
    {
      "title": "Andes Mountains' influence on rainfall explained",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/video/Amazon-River-rainfall-slopes-Andes-Mountains/-18389"
    },
    {
      "title": "Rainfall distribution in the Andes of southern Ecuador derived from blending weather radar data and meteorological field observations",
      "url": "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251529868_Rainfall_distribution_in_the_Andes_of_southern_Ecuador_derived_from_blending_weather_radar_data_and_meteorological_field_observations"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador El Niño Floods Situation Report No. 5 - Ecuador",
      "url": "https://reliefweb.int/report/ecuador/ecuador-el-ni%C3%B1o-floods-situation-report-no-5"
    },
    {
      "title": "ECUADOR (2 April) UNF",
      "url": "https://www.fao.org/4/w8542e/pays/ecu9804e.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador El Niño Floods Situation Report No. 2 - Ecuador",
      "url": "https://reliefweb.int/report/ecuador/ecuador-el-ni%C3%B1o-floods-situation-report-no-2"
    },
    {
      "title": "Floods destroy homes and farms on north coast as the El Niño effect strengthens - CuencaHighLife",
      "url": "https://cuencahighlife.com/floods-destroy-homes-and-farms-on-north-coast-as-the-el-nino-effect-strengthens/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Pacific Equatorial Forest",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Equatorial_Forest"
    },
    {
      "title": "Blue Green Atlas - The Climate of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://bluegreenatlas.com/climate/ecuador_climate.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Rainfall distribution in the Andes of southern Ecuador derived from blending weather radar data and meteorological field observations - ScienceDirect",
      "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169809510002826"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador - World Land Trust",
      "url": "https://www.worldlandtrust.org/ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Environment of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuadorian Amazon wildlife location in Ecuador, Latin America",
      "url": "https://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/locations/ecuadorian-amazon"
    },
    {
      "title": "Wildlife in Ecuador - Types of Ecuadorian Animals - A-Z Animals",
      "url": "https://a-z-animals.com/animals/location/south-america/ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Animals & Wildlife: Unique Species That Call It Home",
      "url": "https://www.adventure-life.com/ecuador/articles/ecuador-wildlife"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Andean Chocó Cloud Forest",
      "url": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6988/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador: Tumbes-Choco",
      "url": "https://savingnature.com/ecuadors-biodiversity-hotpspot-tumbes-choco/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Andean ‘water sponges’: The role of plants in water supply",
      "url": "https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/paramos-andean-water-sponges"
    },
    {
      "title": "In Ecuador, a mountain shrub could hold the key to restoring a precious ecosystem",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2025/02/in-ecuador-a-mountain-shrub-could-hold-the-key-to-restoring-a-precious-ecosystem/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Lessons from the Páramos: How Watershed Conservation Is Restoring Biodiversity",
      "url": "https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/watershed-conservation-restoring-biodiversity/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena - Species",
      "url": "https://www.cepf.net/our-work/biodiversity-hotspots/tumbes-choco-magdalena/species"
    },
    {
      "title": "Tumbes–Chocó–Magdalena",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbes-Choc%C3%B3-Magdalena"
    },
    {
      "title": "Frontiers",
      "url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2026.1892271/full"
    },
    {
      "title": "Wildlife in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.chimuadventures.com/en-us/blog/wildlife-ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Páramo, or water factories: a botanical phenomenon in the Andes",
      "url": "https://wodnesprawy.pl/en/paramo-or-water-factories-in-the-andes/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Geography shapes the phylogeny of frailejones (Espeletiinae Cuatrec., Asteraceae): a remarkable example of recent rapid radiation in sky islands",
      "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5292030/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Páramo in Ecuador, 3600 m dominated by frailejones (Espeletia spp.).",
      "url": "https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Paramo-in-Ecuador-3600-m-dominated-by-frailejones-Espeletia-spp_fig2_288178237"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador: Provinces, Major Ciites & Localities - Population Statistics, Maps, Charts, Weather and Web Information",
      "url": "https://www.citypopulation.de/en/ecuador/cities/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador - MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION",
      "url": "https://countrystudies.us/ecuador/23.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "2. THE QUITO CONTEXT",
      "url": "https://www.fao.org/4/w7445e/w7445e03.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "Volume 5, Number 3, 2018, 39–48 journal homepage: region.ersa.org",
      "url": "https://openjournals.wu.ac.at/ojs/index.php/region/article/view/235/266"
    },
    {
      "title": "Guayaquil",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayaquil"
    },
    {
      "title": "Guide to 18 Largest Cities in Ecuador (Population, Elevation, Attractions...)",
      "url": "https://storyteller.travel/cities-in-ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Biggest Cities In Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/biggest-cities-in-ecuador.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Cities by Population 2026",
      "url": "https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Urbanization in Ecuador: An overview using the Functional Urban Area definition",
      "url": "https://openjournals.wu.ac.at/region/paper_235/235.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Indigenous peoples in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador",
      "url": "https://indigenousnavigator.org/indigenous-data/countries/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador - Minority Rights Group",
      "url": "https://minorityrights.org/country/ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Montubio",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montubio"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador",
      "url": "https://relief.unboundmedicine.com/relief/view/The-World-Factbook/563067/all/Ecuador?q=-+Refined+exports+petroleum+products"
    },
    {
      "title": "Pre-Columbian Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Valdivia culture",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivia_culture"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Venus of Valdivia, Culture Valdivia (4000 b.C. - 1500 b.C.), the Casa del Alabado Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, Quito´s Historic Center at an elevation of 2,850 metres (9,350 ft) above sea level, Ecuador.",
      "url": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/eliasroviello/49210388853"
    },
    {
      "title": "History of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Indigenous Ecuador Before the Inca",
      "url": "https://www.galapagosunbound.com/indigenous-ecuador-inca"
    },
    {
      "title": "Cotocollao culture",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotocollao_culture"
    },
    {
      "title": "Inca-Caranqui",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca-Caranqui"
    },
    {
      "title": "Tumebamba",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumebamba"
    },
    {
      "title": "Huayna Capac",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/biography/Huayna-Capac"
    },
    {
      "title": "Map of the Inca Empire - Expansion and Roads - World History Encyclopedia",
      "url": "https://www.worldhistory.org/image/14113/map-of-the-inca-empire---expansion-and-roads/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Huayna Capac: Biography, Facts & Accomplishments",
      "url": "https://study.com/academy/lesson/huayna-capac-biography-facts-accomplishments.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Inca Expansion & The Conquistadors - ecuadorexplorer.com",
      "url": "https://ecuadorexplorer.com/html/inca_expanison__the_conquista.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "History of Quito",
      "url": "https://www.kupi.com/en-ae/explore/ecuador/quito/history"
    },
    {
      "title": "Quito, Audiencia (Presidency) of",
      "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/quito-audiencia-presidency"
    },
    {
      "title": "Real Audiencia of Quito",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Audiencia_of_Quito"
    },
    {
      "title": "Quito",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito"
    },
    {
      "title": "Quito",
      "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/places/latin-america-and-caribbean/south-american-political-geography/quito"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Valdivia Culture",
      "url": "https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/the-valdivia-culture/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Pambamarca Fortress Complex",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pambamarca_Fortress_Complex"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador's Energy Market, and It's Current Demand for Natural ...",
      "url": "https://www.energycircle.org/articles/ecuadors-energy-market-and-its-current-demand-for-natural-gas"
    },
    {
      "title": "Country Analysis Brief: Ecuador Last Updated: July 20, 2023",
      "url": "https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/countries_long/Ecuador/pdf/ecuador.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "tradingeconomics.com",
      "url": "https://tradingeconomics.com/ecuador/exports"
    },
    {
      "title": "National Oil Company Profile: Petroecuador",
      "url": "https://resourcegovernance.org/publications/national-oil-company-profile-petroecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador’s Economy in 2025",
      "url": "https://www.currencytransfer.com/blog/expert-analysis/ecuadors-economy-in-2025"
    },
    {
      "title": "GFRAS - Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.g-fras.org/en/world-wide-extension-study/south-america/south-america/ecuador.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Banana Exports Hit Record 378 Million Boxes in 2025, Up 3.9% Year-Over-Year as EU and Russia Absorb Over Half of Shipments",
      "url": "https://www.ecuadorbrief.com/articles/ecuador-banana-exports-record-378-million-boxes-2025"
    },
    {
      "title": "Banana production in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_production_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Commodities - Ecuador Business Intelligence",
      "url": "https://www.ecuadorbrief.com/sectors/commodities"
    },
    {
      "title": "What Ecuador Exports Most",
      "url": "https://www.freightamigo.com/en/blog/logistics/what-does-ecuador-export-more-than-any-other-country-top-products-in-2026/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Cacao Exports on Track to Surpass Ghana -- Projected 623,000+ MT in 2026",
      "url": "https://www.expatecuador.com/en/articles/ecuador-cacao-exports-surpass-ghana-projected-623000-mt-2026"
    },
    {
      "title": "Agriculture Investments: Part One — Ecuador Homes And Land",
      "url": "https://ecuadorhomesandland.com/news/agriculture-investments-part-one"
    },
    {
      "title": "Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems: Two new sites recognized in Ecuador’s Andes and Amazon regions",
      "url": "https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/GIAHS-two-new-sites-recognized-in-ecuador-s-andes-and-amazon-regions-140223/en"
    },
    {
      "title": "Maize Breeding in the Highlands of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia: A Review",
      "url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/2/212"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Agritourism Will Forever Transform How You Travel Through Magical Highland Harvests And Jungle Homestays, Here’s The Latest Trend - Travel And Tour World",
      "url": "https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/4halfjc60iou/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Indigenous Farming Systems in Ecuador: Lessons for Adapting to Climate Change - Groundswell International",
      "url": "https://www.groundswellinternational.org/blog/indigenous-farming-techniques-ecuador-lessons-adapt-climate-change/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Economy of Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Highlands Ecuador (La Sierra) - Wild Expedition",
      "url": "https://wildexpedition.com/zone/highlands-ecuador-la-sierra/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Pan-American Highway",
      "url": "https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pan-American_Highway"
    },
    {
      "title": "Transport in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "SOTE Oil Pipeline - Global Energy Monitor",
      "url": "https://www.gem.wiki/SOTE_Oil_Pipeline"
    },
    {
      "title": "Crudos Pesados Oil Pipeline - Global Energy Monitor",
      "url": "https://www.gem.wiki/Crudos_Pesados_Oil_Pipeline"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Real Price of Oil in the Amazon: - The Real Price of Oil in the Amazon:",
      "url": "https://amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/real-price-oil-amazon/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Table 1. Ecuador's energy overview, 2021",
      "url": "https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/countries_long/Ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Petroecuador Declares Emergency in Major Oil Pipeline Amid Volcanic Landslides",
      "url": "https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/petroecuador-declares-emergency-major-oil-pipeline-amid-volcanic-landslides"
    },
    {
      "title": "Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empresa_de_Ferrocarriles_Ecuatorianos"
    },
    {
      "title": "Alaus%C3%AD railway station",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaus%C3%AD_railway_station"
    },
    {
      "title": "Alaus%C3%AD",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaus%C3%AD"
    },
    {
      "title": "Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nariz_del_Diablo"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Ecuadorian Railway: The Most Difficult Train in the World",
      "url": "https://ecuadorexplorer.com/html/train.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Highways in Colombia",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_in_Colombia"
    },
    {
      "title": "Highways in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Oil palm and balsa plantations trigger deforestation in Ecuadorian Amazon",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/oil-palm-and-balsa-plantations-trigger-deforestation-in-ecuadorian-amazon/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Forest Governance - Ecuador",
      "url": "https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon-forest/forest-governance/forest-governance-ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples",
      "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002932"
    },
    {
      "title": "Environmental Impacts - Amazon Frontlines",
      "url": "https://amazonfrontlines.org/work/defending-territory/environmental-impacts/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Causes and consequences of deforestation in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/jefferson.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "Texaco’s Toxic Legacy In Ecuador",
      "url": "https://amazonwatch.org/news/2007/0614-texacos-toxic-legacy-in-ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador vs. Chevron-Texaco over oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon",
      "url": "https://litigioclimatico.com/en/node/274"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Ordered to Pay Amazon-Polluting Chevron $220 Million",
      "url": "https://truthout.org/articles/ecuador-ordered-to-pay-amazon-polluting-chevron-220-million/"
    },
    {
      "title": "ecuador orders chevron to pay 8 6 billion for alleged amazon contamination",
      "url": "https://www.foxnews.com/world/ecuador-orders-chevron-to-pay-8-6-billion-for-alleged-amazon-contamination"
    },
    {
      "title": "Chevron’s “Amazon Chernobyl” Disaster in Ecuador: Lessons from the Frontlines",
      "url": "https://globaljustice.yale.edu/news/chevrons-amazon-chernobyl-disaster-ecuador-lessons-frontlines"
    },
    {
      "title": "Yasun%C3%AD-ITT Initiative",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasun%C3%AD-ITT_Initiative"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador communities resist Canada-backed gold mine in sacred highlands",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ecuador-communities-resist-canada-backed-gold-mine-in-sacred-highlands/"
    },
    {
      "title": "100,000 Ecuadorians protest Canadian mining project threatening key water source",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/09/100000-ecuadorians-protest-canadian-mining-project-threatening-key-water-source/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador suspends Canadian mining licence following protests - Business in Vancouver",
      "url": "https://www.biv.com/news/resources-agriculture/ecuador-suspends-canadian-owned-mining-licence-after-mass-protests-11272735"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuadorian farmers protest against a new environmental consultation process and an open-pit mine",
      "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/video/2023/12/ecuadorian-farmers-protest-against-a-new-environmental-consultation-process-and-an-open-pit-mine/"
    },
    {
      "title": "A New Chapter in Ecuador’s Anti-Mining Struggle",
      "url": "https://www.newsclick.in/new-chapter-ecuadors-anti-mining-struggle"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador’s 68 protected areas account for almost 14% of its territory - The Cuenca Dispatch",
      "url": "https://thecuencadispatch.com/ecuadors-68-protected-areas-account-for-almost-14-of-its-territory/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Galápagos National Park",
      "url": "https://national-parks.org/ecuador/galapagos/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Marine Protections in the Galápagos Benefit Nature, Ecuadorian Fishing Fleet, and Local Economy",
      "url": "https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2021/07/20/marine-protections-in-the-galapagos-benefit-nature-ecuadorian-fishing-fleet-and-local-economy"
    },
    {
      "title": "Gal%C3%A1pagos Marine Reserve",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_Marine_Reserve"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ocean protection update: The Swimway, Hermandad and CMAR - Galapagos Conservation Trust",
      "url": "https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/galapagos-ocean-protection-swimway-hermandad-cmar/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Announces Creation of New Marine Reserve in Galapagos",
      "url": "https://seaturtles.org/ecuador-announces-creation-of-new-marine-reserve-in-galapagos/"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Legal Protection of Pachamama: The Implications of Environmental Personhood in Ecuador — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review",
      "url": "https://www.culawreview.org/journal/the-legal-protection-of-pachamama-the-implications-of-environmental-personhood-in-ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Rights of nature in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature_in_Ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador Constitution of 2008: rights of nature",
      "url": "https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/ecuador-constitution/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Press Release: Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature - CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities",
      "url": "https://celdf.org/2008/09/press-release-ecuador-approves-new-constitution-voters-approve-rights-of-nature/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Yasuní-ITT Project in Ecuador - UBC Open Case Studies",
      "url": "https://cases.open.ubc.ca/yasuni-itt-project-in-ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador's Yasuni-ITT Initiative: A Case Study on International Climate Change Mitigation Narratives",
      "url": "https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/items/a897c233-3f9b-46fb-8720-3d3fd4f481bf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador — Earth Law Center",
      "url": "https://www.earthlawcenter.org/international-law/2016/8/ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Yasuni-ITT Initiative",
      "url": "https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/2011-summer/yasuni-itt-initiative"
    },
    {
      "title": "Rights of Nature in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.boell.de/en/2025/01/27/rights-nature-ecuador"
    },
    {
      "title": "French Geodesic Mission to the Equator",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Geodesic_Mission_to_the_Equator"
    },
    {
      "title": "French Geodesic Mission",
      "url": "https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/4245136"
    },
    {
      "title": "Mitad del Mundo and the monument on the equatorial line",
      "url": "https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/unterhaltung/reisen/mitad-del-mundo-and-the-monument-on-the-equatorial-line/70168988"
    },
    {
      "title": "Alexander von Humboldt: Discovering the World from Chimborazo",
      "url": "https://impactful.travel/alexander-von-humboldt-discovering-the-world-from-chimborazo/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Alexander von Humboldt",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-von-Humboldt"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Pioneering Maps of Alexander von Humboldt",
      "url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pioneering-maps-alexander-von-humboldt-180973342/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Climb Chimborazo and See the World",
      "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1071988"
    },
    {
      "title": "A Humboldtian view of mountains",
      "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz4161"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf",
      "url": "https://www.ryanmizzen.com/the-invention-of-nature-by-andrea-wulf-review/"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Origin of Species Revised March 2018 www.BioInteractive.org Page 1 of 12",
      "url": "https://www.biointeractive.org/sites/default/files/BeakofFinch-Educator-film.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Charles Darwin",
      "url": "https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-wmopen-biology1/chapter/charles-darwin/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species",
      "url": "https://www.galapagosislands.com/info/history/charles-darwin.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Darwin's Finches Keep Evolving",
      "url": "https://www.visiblebody.com/blog/darwins-finches-keep-evolving"
    },
    {
      "title": "Evolution teaching resource: spot the adaptations in Darwin's finches",
      "url": "https://www.nhm.ac.uk/schools/teaching-resources/galapagos-finches-show-beak-differences.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Galapagos finches and their beaks and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/video/Charles-Darwin-Galapagos-finches-woodpecker-finch-birds/-208041"
    },
    {
      "title": "Volcanoes, Eruptions and Earthquakes in Ecuador - Facts and Information",
      "url": "https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/ecuador.html"
    },
    {
      "title": "Quito: A City Subject to Natural Hazards",
      "url": "https://www.alloprof.qc.ca/en/students/vl/geography/quito-a-city-subject-to-natural-hazards-g1013"
    },
    {
      "title": "Natural Hazards in Ecuador",
      "url": "https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7a99d118b6f04bc6bcf4b1c5feb0ac20"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sustainable Management of Landslides in Ecuador: Leveraging Geophysical Surveys for Effective Risk Reduction",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3390/su162410797"
    },
    {
      "title": "Glaciers of Ecuador: a review of current scientific knowledge - ScienceDirect",
      "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825226002916"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador - Climate witnesses",
      "url": "https://www.klimazeugen.eu/en/country/ecuador-2/"
    },
    {
      "title": "When the water runs out",
      "url": "https://www.salon.com/2006/04/07/ecuador2/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Vulnerability to floods as a decision-making tool in coastal urban zones - ScienceDirect",
      "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420926002190"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador: Floods related to the El Niño phenomenon - Early Action Protocol Activation (EAP2020EC02, Operation №: MDREC023), 23 August 2023 - Ecuador",
      "url": "https://reliefweb.int/report/ecuador/ecuador-floods-related-el-nino-phenomenon-early-action-protocol-activation-eap2020ec02-operation-no-mdrec023-23-august-2023"
    },
    {
      "title": "Climate Change, El Niño, and the State of Emergency in Ecuador - Pacific Standard",
      "url": "https://psmag.com/environment/climate-change-state-of-emergency-in-ecuador/"
    },
    {
      "title": "A participatory community case study of periurban coastal flood vulnerability in southern Ecuador",
      "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6814235/"
    },
    {
      "title": "NASA Analysis Finds Strong El Niño Could Bring Extra Floods This Winter",
      "url": "https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-analysis-finds-strong-el-nino-could-bring-extra-floods-this-winter/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sea Level Rise Projection Map - Guayaquil",
      "url": "https://earth.org/data_visualization/sea-level-rise-by-2100-guayaquil/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Ecuador’s glaciers are disappearing fast, and this could spell trouble for industry and tourism - U-M Erb",
      "url": "https://erb.umich.edu/2018/04/03/ecuadors-glaciers-are-disappearing-fast-and-this-could-spell-trouble-for-industry-and-tourism/"
    },
    {
      "title": "FEATURE STORY",
      "url": "https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/12/07/data-and-technology-ecuador-seeks-solutions-to-retreat-of-glaciers"
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}