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Droughts are complex phenomena that can affect highly the development of a region due to the reduction of the availability of water with various degrees of severity, duration, and extent. Large-scale climatic variability patterns such as El Niño South Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) can trigger droughts as they alter normal precipitation patterns. Drought indices simplify the analysis of the complex interrelationships between the different climatic parameters that influence the occurrence of droughts, allowing the quantitative evaluation of anomalies in terms of intensity, duration, frequency, and spatial extent. The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) is one of the most used for its simplicity and accuracy. The aim of this paper is to study the possible teleconnections between ENSO, AMO and PDO and the occurrence of droughts in Ecuador - South America, a very poorly studied area of the world, and to contribute to planning and decision making in the management of water resources in this country in a short and long term. The SPI was calculated for each month (monthly scale) for a period of 44 years and spatialized by Kriging interpolation to later be related to the ONI, AMO and PDO indices using a one-way ANOVA test. It was determined that there is a greater occurrence of droughts when the PDO is in the negative phase. The occurrence of droughts is also significant when the ENSO, in the neutral phase, and the PDO, in the negative phase, take place simultaneously. The AMO showed an insignificant influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a dearth of data from Ecuador on the burden of life-threatening fungal disease entities; therefore, we estimated the burden of serious fungal infections in Ecuador based on the populations at risk and available epidemiological databases and publications. A full literature search was done to identify all epidemiology papers reporting fungal infection rates. WHO, ONU-AIDS, Index Mundi, Global Asthma Report, Globocan, and national data [Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC), Ministerio de Salud Pública (MSP), Sociedad de Lucha Contra el Cáncer (SOLCA), Instituto Nacional de Donación y Trasplante de Órganos, Tejidos y Células (INDOT)] were reviewed. When no data existed, risk populations were used to estimate frequencies of fungal infections, using previously described methodology by LIFE. Ecuador has a variety of climates from the cold of the Andes through temperate to humid hot weather at the coast and in the Amazon basin. Ecuador has a population of 15,223,680 people and an average life expectancy of 76 years. The median estimate of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) population at risk for fungal disease (<200 CD4 cell counts) is ∼10,000, with a rate of 11.1% (1100) of histoplasma, 7% (700) of cryptococcal meningitis, and 11% (1070) of Pneumocystis pneumonia. The burden of candidemia is 1037. Recurrent Candida vaginitis (≥4 episodes per year) affects 307,593 women aged 15-50 years. Chronic pulmonary aspergillosis probably affects ∼476 patients following tuberculosis (TB). Invasive aspergillosis is estimated to affect 748 patients (∼5.5/100,000). In addition, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) in asthma and severe asthma with fungal sensitization (SAFS) were estimated to affect 26,642 and 45,013 people, respectively. Our estimates indicate that 433,856 (3%) of the population in Ecuador is affected by serious fungal infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health nutritionists rely on anthropometry for nutritional assessment, program planning, and evaluation. Children are usually heavily clothed at high altitudes and in cold climates. Failing to adjust for clothing weight could underestimate malnutrition prevalence. The objective of this paper is to validate an adjustment process for estimating clothing weight and quantify potential misclassification error. In March and September 2009, 293 and 272 children under 2 years of age, respectively, were measured for weight and length in 14 highlands communities in Ecuador. Weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ) and weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) were compared using clothing-unadjusted weights and two types of clothing-adjusted weights: individual clothing-weights and population-mean clothing-weights. Modelling showed up to 24% of children’s nutritional status and degree of malnutrition were misclassified for WAZ, and 13% for WHZ, when clothing was not taken into account in this cold climate. Compared with the more time-intensive individual clothing-weight adjustment, the population-mean clothing-weight adjustments had high specificity and sensitivity for WAZ. In cold climates, adjusting for population mean clothing weight provides a better estimate of the prevalence of malnutrition to inform appropriate program decisions for addressing underweight. An individual clothing weight adjustment may also be essential to classify a specific child’s nutritional status when acute malnutrition is a concern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unraveling the relationship between humidity, wind, and rainfall is vitally important to understand the dynamics of water vapor transport. In recent years, the use of causal networks to identify causal flows has gained much ground in the field of climatology to provide new insights about physical processes and hypothesize previously unknown ones. In this paper, the concept of a virtual control volume is proposed, which resembles the Eulerian description of a vector field, but is based on causal flows instead. A virtual control surface is used to identify the influence of surrounding climatic processes on the control volume (i.e., the study region). Such an influence is characterized by using a causal inference method that gives information about its direction and strength. The proposed approach was evaluated by inferring and spatially delineating areas of influence of humidity and wind on the rainfall of Ecuador. It was possible to confirm known patterns of influence, such as the influence of the Pacific Ocean on the coast and the influence of the Atlantic Ocean on the Amazon. Moreover, the approach was able to identify plausible new hypotheses, such as the influence of humidity on rainfall in the northern part of the boundary between the Andes and the Amazon, as well as the origin (the Amazon or the tropical Atlantic) and the altitude at which surrounding humidity and wind influence rainfall within the control volume. These hypotheses highlight the ability of the approach to exploit a large amount of scalar data and identify pathways of influence between climatic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Seasonally dry forests in the neotropics are heavily threatened by a combination of human disturbances and climate change; however, the severity of these threats is seldom contrasted. This study aims to quantify and compare the effects of deforestation and climate change on the natural spatial ranges of 17 characteristic tree species of southern Ecuador dry deciduous forests, which are heavily fragmented and support high levels of endemism as part of the Tumbesian ecoregion. We used 660 plant records to generate species distribution models and land-cover data to project species ranges for two time frames: a simulated deforestation scenario from 2008 to 2014 with native forest to anthropogenic land-use conversion, and an extreme climate change scenario (CCSM4.0, RCP 8.5) for 2050, which assumed zero change from human activities. To assess both potential threats, we compared the estimated annual rates of species loss (i.e., range shifts) affecting each species. Deforestation loss for all species averaged approximately 71 km2/year, while potential climate-attributed loss was almost 21 km2/year. Moreover, annual area loss rates due to deforestation were significantly higher than those attributed to climate-change (P < 0.01). However, projections into the future scenario show evidence of diverging displacement patterns, indicating the potential formation of novel ecosystems, which is consistent with other species assemblage predictions as result of climate change. Furthermore, we provide recommendations for management and conservation, prioritizing the most threatened species such as Albizia multiflora, Ceiba trichistandra, and Cochlospermum vitifolium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]