Hierarchical classification and ecosystem cartography in Andean zone of the Biobío Region's, Chile

Abstract

One of the procedures more used to represent the ecosystems in maps is through environmental units. This is obtained from the superposition of thematic maps of the different compartments that conform the ecosystems of a territory. As an alternative to that methodology, this work presents a deductive procedure of integration of biophysic variables, under the concept that an ecosystem is a functional unit of the planet of any magnitude that auto-organized in the time and that is structured by alive and not alive elements, bound by a plot of biophysic relations of interdependence. This procedure has been used to classify and to map the ecosystems in the Andean zone of the Region of the Bio Bio, in Chile.