Noel Kempff Mercado National Park
| Noel Kempff Mercado National Park | |
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IUCN category II (national park)
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| Location | Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia |
| Coordinates | 14°16′0″S 60°52′0″W / 14.26667°S 60.86667°WCoordinates: 14°16′0″S 60°52′0″W / 14.26667°S 60.86667°W |
| Area | 15,838 km2 |
| Established | June 28, 1979 |
| Type | Natural |
| Criteria | ix, x |
| Designated | 2000 (24th session) |
| Reference no. | 967 |
| State Party | Bolivia |
| Region | Latin America and the Caribbean |
Noel Kempff Mercado National Park is a national park in northeast Santa Cruz Department, Province of José Miguel de Velasco, Bolivia, on the border with Brazil.
Noel Kempff Mercado National Park covers 750,000 hectares of land, much of which consists of the Serrania de Huanchaca. The park is located on the Brazilian Shield in the northeast Santa Cruz Department in Bolivia. The Rio de Itenez is its eastern and northern border separating it from the neighboring Brazil. It adjoins the 158,621 hectares (391,960 acres) Serra Ricardo Franco State Park, created in 1997, in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. It is situated in a transition zone where the Amazonian rain forests and the dry forest and savannas of Cerrado meet. The park is made up of five distinct habitats, including upland evergreen forest, deciduous forest, upland cerrado savanna, savanna wetlands, and forest wetlands. As a whole, the region can be described as having a marked dry season in the winter and a mean annual precipitation of 1,500 mm.
In 1908, Percy Fawcett first explored the area that is now the national park. It was not until almost 70 years later that the area was looked at again. In the 1970s geologists were sent to the area to survey the rock formations of the Precambrian Shield region in Bolivia. They published on the geology and landforms and produced the first maps. This expedition attracted the attention of Noel Kempff Mercado, an esteemed conservation biologist of the time. Mercado recognized the global significance of the area enough to propose a campaign to preserve it. Unfortunately, Mercado was murdered by drug traffickers and never saw his dream become a reality. Many of his fellow citizens responded. The government established the park and named it in his honour. It came into existence in 1988 as a 750,000 hectare area of undisturbed land.
Climate in NKMNP is distinctly seasonal with approximately 1400-1500mm of mean annual precipitation. There is a dry season of about 4–6 months (May to September), when rainfall declines. Precipitation occurs mostly in the austral summer, originating from deep-cell convective activity over the Amazon basin and southerly extension of ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone). Mean annual temperature is 25-26 C but during the dry season temperatures can drop to 10 degrees C for several days when cold dry Patagonia air masses (surazos) reach the park. Since the mid-Holocene, there has been a progressive vegetation succession from savanna to semi-deciduous forest to evergreen rain-forest in NKMNP attributed to increased annual precipitation and a shorter dry season. This expansion of rainforest occurred over the last three millennia.
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