Post 6: A piece of News

Hi everyone, this week I would like to tell you about the article "Flowering Bamboos in Chile and Argentina: Current Massive Bloom Coligüe, Natural History and Risks" published in “Bosque Nativo” journal.

I chose this piece of news because the topic seems very interesting and because I did not know that this occurred in the south of Chile.

The authors notes that the vast majority of  bamboo species massive bloom simultaneously reach  tens or hundreds of thousands of hectares continuous flowering. In Chile and Argentina there are about 10 species of the genus Chusquea. The Colihue or Cane (Chusquea culeou) is perennial grass belonging to the subfamily of bamboos, their flowering cycle varies between 15 and 70 years. After flowering, large quantities of seeds are dispersed by increasing the population of local seed-eating rodents, this phenomenon is known as "ratada" and could increase the risk of people being infected with the Hanta virus, and moreover the mass death of Colihue generates an increase of dry fine fuel in the understory, increasing the risk of forest fires.

(Chusquea culeou)

This information is important to the forestry sector because it needs to implement measures on forest fires prevention and people‘s protection.

I hope you liked my post and would like to learn more about this topic.