Andino Norpatagónica Biosphere Reserve

The Andino Norpatagónica Biosphere Reserve is located in northwestern Patagonia and includes the Argentine provinces of Chubut, Río Negro, and Neuquén. The Biosphere Reserve has a total area of 2,226,942 ha (over 5.5 million acres).

The Andino Norpatagónica Biosphere Reserve comprises several national protected areas run by the National Parks Administration. It includes five National Parks:

• Lanín National Park: The park takes its name from the highest peak, the Lanín volcano, an ice-clad cone-shaped extinct stratovolcano of 3,776 m (12,388 ft), which borders Chile.

• Nahuel Huapi National Park: The largest of the national parks in the region, it has an area of 7,050 sq km (2,720 sq mi) or nearly two million acres. It surrounds Nahuel Huapi Lake in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes.

• Los Arrayanes National Park: Created to preserve a myrtle forest, from which it takes its name, it occupies the entire Quetrihué Peninsula.

• Lago Puelo National Park: Located in the Patagonia Forest region of Argentina, it is home to many endemic flora species and exhibits beautiful scenery and exceptional weather due to its low elevation, geographical environment, and geologic formation.

• Los Alerces National Park: The park was created in 1937 to protect the alerce forest and other typical flora of the Patagonian Andes. It contains the largest alerce forest in Argentina.

The Biosphere Reserve also includes ten provincial reserves and protected areas as well as additional municipal reserves:

• Cerro Pirque Provincial Park

• Arroyo Motoco Provincial Reserve

• Río Turbio Park and Provincial Reserve

• Cerro Currumahuida Forest Reserve

• Río Azul Natural Protected Area

• Baguilt Lake Natural Protected Area

• Cipresal de las Guaitecas Natural Protected Area

• Lake Epuyén Forest Reserve

• Rio Limay Protected Landscape

• Baguilt Reservation, Ice River, and Lake Huemul

The landscape is primarily mountainous, dominated by the Andes Mountains in the western areas and the Sub-Andean plains and plateaus in the eastern regions.

In the mountainous area, the largest bodies of water include Nahuel Huapi, Lácar, Traful, Mascardi, Gutierrez, Rivadavia, Puelo, and Futalaufquen lakes. Various terraces levels also accompany a high-density drainage network in vast alluvial plains.

Major habitats & land cover types:

• temperate coniferous and broadleaf forests (coihue forest, lenga beech forest, scrub and forests of antarctic beech, forests with araucaria, cypress forest in the mountains, oak, raulí, and coihue forests, larch forest, Valdivian forest)

• semi-desert high Andes

• Patagonian steppe

• waterbodies and courses

• forested areas

• agricultural land

• urban areas

• eternal snow and glaciers