9600628 Richey This Americas Program award will fund a collaborative research project between Dr. Jeffrey Richey, University of Washington, Seattle and Dr. Jorge Quintanilla, Instituto de Investigaciones Quimicas, Universidad Mayor de San Andres, La Paz, Bolivia, and Dr. Carlos Llerena, Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, Lima, Peru. They will investigate the biogeochemistry of natural flowing waters in the Amazonian regions of Bolivia and Peru. The goals of the research are to characterize the chemistry and hydrology of these little studied regions and to synthesize these data with data already collected in the Brazilian portions of the basin. They will try to determine where are the key "setpoints" of river chemistry in the Andean source regions of the Amazon River system. To meet these goals, the project will carry out collaborative field expeditions along transects of key Andean drainage basins, conduct field and laboratory analyses at the participating institutions and integrate results with basin characteristics. The project will bring together, for the first time, a team of U.S. biogeochemists and scientists with similar interests from Peru and Bolivia and will directly address the needs of all countries involved. U.S. scientists will benefit substantially from the input from those experts in the region and the access to base laboratory, field stations, vehicles, and human resources. ***
