Sky Islands: a Time Travel in the Andes Mountains

"Sky Islands: A Past Time Travel in the Andes Mountains" is a 14 minutes film that integrates digital art, time-lapse photography, 3D animation, and scientific data visualization to explore the evolution of the high-altitude ecosystems of the Northern Andes, known as páramos. This film visualizes a chapter in the ecological history of the Northern Andean Cordillera of South America.

In our current era, anthropogenic global warming poses significant threats to humanity and all life on Earth. This project aims to highlight the extraordinary ecosystem of the páramo—a refuge of unique diversification and a hotspot of biodiversity that has evolved over at least two million years. By journeying from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene, the film seeks to raise awareness of the urgent need to protect this remarkable ecosystem and poses a critical question: Are we still on time to prevent the loss of more than two million years of evolution of this extraordinary ecosystem on our planet?

"Sky Islands" was part of a Master of Arts program at the Piet Zwart Institute and the Nuffic-NFP Fellowship Program, with scientific support from Dr. Suzette Flantua and Prof. Dr. Henry Hooghiemstra of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) at the Science Park, University of Amsterdam. The project received additional support from the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam and the Hugo de Vries Funds. It was based on: Flantua S.G.A., A. O’Dea, R.E. Onstein, C. Giraldo, H. Hooghiemstra 2019. The flickering connectivity system of the northern Andean páramos. Journal of Biogeography 46(8), 1808-1825. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jbi.13607

 See more information at: https://www.catalhinagiraldo.com/sky-islands