La familia de las Asteráceas o Compuestas es la más diversa de la flora de Chile, sin embargo, sólo algunas tribus han sido sometidas a un tratamiento sistemático reciente, mientras que el conocimiento de la distribución geográfica de los taxones es aún muy deficiente. A partir de la revisión de ejemplares de herbario y trabajo de campo, se realizó una prospección de la flora de Asteráceas de la Región de Arica y Parinacota. Ello da como resultado la presencia de 144 taxones en la región, de los cuales un 82,6% es nativo (119) y un 9% es endémico (13) de Chile, mientras que el 8,3% restante corresponde a especies alóctonas o naturalizadas (12). El género Senecio es el más diverso en la región con 27 especies nativas, incluyendo seis especies endémicas de Chile. Se constató la presencia de cinco especies nuevas para la flora de Chile: Achyrocline ramosissima Britton, Gamochaeta humilis Wedd., Mniodes kunthiana (DC.) S.E. Freire et al. (=Lucilia violacea Wedd.), Pseudogynoxys cordifolia (Cass.) Cabrera y Senecio evacoides Sch. Bip. Sobre la base de los materiales recolectados, se ha publicado recientemente la nueva especie Pseudognaphalium munoziae N. Bayón, C. Monti & S.E. Freire. Adicionalmente, se ha revisado la correcta denominación de la especie endémica Stevia philippiana. La mayor diversidad de especies se encuentra en la provincia de Parinacota, sobre los 3.000 m s.n.m. Las Asteráceas no sólo destacan en la región por su diversidad, sino también por constituir un elemento esencial de la vegetación, especialmente de las unidades vegetacionales de precordillera y altiplano, denominadas genéricamente como "tolar". La mayor parte de los pisos de vegetación de la provincia de Parinacota poseen especies de Asteráceas como especies dominantes, especialmente de los géneros Parastrephia, Lophopappus, Baccharis y Senecio. Si bien la región posee un porcentaje importante de superficie bajo protección, varias de las especies estudiadas, especialmente de precordillera, quedan fuera del sistema de áreas protegidas.

The Atacama Desert at its margins harbors a unique biodiversity that is still very poorly known, especially in coastal fog oases spanning from Perú towards the Atacama coast. An outstanding species-rich fog oasis is the latitudinal fringe Paposo-Taltal, that is considered an iconic site of the Lomas formation. This contribution is the first to reveal the knowledge on arthropods of this emblematic coastal section. We used pitfall traps to study the taxonomic composition, richness, and abundance of terrestrial arthropods in 17 sample sites along a 100 km section of the coast between 24.5 and 25.5 southern latitude, in a variety of characteristic habitats. From a total of 9154 individuals, we were able to identify 173 arthropod species grouped into 118 genera and 57 families. The most diverse group were insects, with 146 species grouped in 97 genera and 43 families, while arachnids were represented by 27 species grouped into 21 genera and 14 families. Current conservation challenges on a global scale are driving the creation and evaluation of potential conservation sites in regions with few protected areas, such as the margins of the Atacama Desert. Better taxonomic, distributional, and population knowledge is urgently needed to perform concrete conservation actions in a biodiversity hotspot at a desert edge.

In the context of the current global climate and biodiversity crisis, urgent action is needed to improve participatory and co-productive governance in territories under sustainability directives, such as biosphere reserves. These territories comprise a global network with the potential to apply and replicate sustainability actions, improve livelihoods, and boost climate change resilience while reducing impacts on the environment and the biodiversity in all continents. In the biosphere reserves network’s 50 years of existence, progress and setbacks have been reported in different regions around the world, and there is an urgent need to envision alternative futures. In this contribution, we describe the results and reflections of our ‘Open Academy’ that enhanced the participatory governance in La Campana–Peñuelas Biosphere Reserve in Central Chile. We crossed the traditional assessment with the principles of transdisciplinary and intergenerational knowledge co-creation. The results show that the traditional performance assessment shows a generally poor performance and reveals the weaknesses of the governance system of the reserve’s management. The extraction of water by mining and agroindustry, uncontrolled urbanization, wildfires, weak social participation, and low integration of indigenous communities are crucial issues for the performance of biosphere reserves. On the other hand, these territories have the potential as models toward post-extractive economies. Enhancing participatory governance, biosphere reserves shall serve as a) agents for configuring the future as an eco-social pact with the territory; b) pilot test areas for alternative futures; and c) places to promote the social collective as a conscious agent of the future.

Cities, in recent years, have seen their functional and metabolic relationships with their agrarian hinterland being either broken off completely or substantially damaged. Within this context, Local Food Systems (LFS) can play a key role in restoring the supply relationships under regenerative assumptions. This paper analyses LFS within the Concepción Metropolitan Area (CMA) as a representative case of Metropolitan Areas in Chile. The aim of the paper is to evaluate whether LFS are regenerating sustainable rural-urban relationships, and to accomplish this goal, foodsheds have been used as a methodological tool to both characterise and represent food traceability. For this purpose, three quantitative foodshed indicators have been applied and three qualitative spatial analytical categories of the Regenerative Food Systems (RFS) defined to decode the behaviour of LFS in the CMA. The proposed method has been successful as an initial exploratory attempt to characterize the regenerative potential of RFS. The results highlight that LFS in the CMA are certainly restoring relationships between the city and its surrounding farmland by establishing new and renewed supply linkages. Further, the application of this method has shed light on some key aspects that show how an LFS is being converted into a potential RFS.