Digital Elevation Model (3D) **new** 2003/08/14 14:47:24.801 GMT-5 2003/08/14 14:49:01.565 GMT-5 John Janovec jjanovec@brit.org Adan Galvan jago@rice.edu John Janovec jjanovec@brit.org digital elevation model los amigos conservation area A digital elevation model of the los amigos conservation area.

The availability of the Digital Elevation Model now allows for a carefully directed research design for sampling biotic and abiotic diversity. With an emphasis on plant diversity, the Los Amigos Botany team, consisting of an international group of Ph.D. scientists, graduate students, undergraduate students, and local field collaborators, will run landscape-scale transects that traverse a diversity of habitats. In the case of this scene, we will conduct systematic inventory and monitoring along several transects that connect the Madre de Dios floodplain forests (1) to the distant dissected terrain beyond the Amiguillos (3) to the Los Amigos River (not visible in this scene, but to north). We will ask questions pertaining to the distribution and variation of vegetation across the landscape, and use our quantitative and qualitative data to devise a classification. Preliminary vegetation maps have been developed, but much ground-truthing is needed to make these maps accurate and reliable.