Finca Las Piedras Research Station

Finca Las Piedras is the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon’s research and education center in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, in the southern Peruvian Amazon. The site provides access to thousands of hectares of diverse Amazonian ecosystems, including ‘terra firme’ or upland rainforest dominated by Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) and other tropical hardwoods and aquatic habitats ranging from streams to Mauritia palm swamps (‘aguajales’ locally). These habitats contain the full complement of top predators including 5 cat species and countless species of plants and other animals, thousands of which have been documented by our team.

Comfortable facilities for living and working on site and easy accessibility from the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado, make Finca Las Piedras the ideal base for exploration, research, and education in the Amazon.

Finca Las Piedras at a glance…

Location: Madre de Dios, Peru (lat. -12.226348°, lon. -69.112599°)

Distance to regional capital: Puerto Maldonado; 48 km, ~1 hr by car

Living facilities: Shared dorms, private rooms, laboratory space, dining hall, shared and private bathrooms & cold showers

Meals: 7am, 1pm, 6:30pm in the common dining hall

Electricity: 220 V provided by solar panels

Year Founded
2016
Year Joined OBFS
2020
Size of Field Station (hectares)
1-100
FSML Web Address
https://www.sustainableamazon.org/finca-las-piedras

Private nonprofit organization?
Yes
Universities affiliated / Parent Organization
No
Federal, state, or local governmental partners?
No
Member of the Virtual Field
No

Additional Information

Private nonprofit organization?
Names of Universities affilated
0
Federal, state, or local governmental partners?
No
Name of partner
Wild Green Future, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
Tribal partners/users
Yes
MSI/HBCU users
No
Community College users
No
Member of the Virtual Field
No

Visiting a FS/ML

Open to the Public
Yes
Year round staff
6-10
Seasonal staff
6-10
Overnight housing facilities/# of beds
21-50
Distance to emergency services
0-20 minutes
Library
No
Hiking trails
Yes
Internship employment
Yes

Environmental Information

Biomes
Tropical Rain Forest
Minimum Elevation
0-100 meters
Maximum Elevation
0-100 meters
Köppen climate classification
A (tropical)
Freshwater habitats
No
Urban or rural
Agricultural fields
No

Research

REU host station
No
Dry lab space
Yes
Wet Lab space
No
Research vessels available
No
GIS capacity on site
No
Long term data sets
Yes
On site herbarium or voucher species
Formal Data Management Plan
Yes
Mesocosms, plots, stream diversions, or other sets ups for outdoor manipulative experiments
Yes
Date Joined OBFS
January 29, 2024