Media Design Artist
Catalina Giraldo
Research and Publications
"Mujeres liderando la conservación y la soberanía alimentaria en el DRMI Ciénagas de Barbacoas: experiencia de apropiación social del conocimiento en agroecología”
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Catalina Giraldo, Juliana Cuello González, Juan Carlos Coral, Ana María Becerra, Ingrid Romero y Marisol Santos-Acevedo. 2021. Fundación Biodiversa Colombia. Ministerio de Ciencias, Comunidad de Bocas de Barbacoas, Antioquia, Colombia.
"Women leading conservation and food sovereignty in the DRMI Ciénagas de Barbacoas: experience of social appropriation of knowledge in agroecology" is a guide for the maintenance of organic gardens, building a mobile chicken coop, a biodigester, processing and preserving food, a cookbook that uses the products of the garden and a way of associating through solidarity. It is a useful tool for many peasant communities and all interested readers. The design, illustration and assembly of Natasha Jaramillo brings together the drawings made by the women in the workshops, and represents the houses, the territory and the inhabitants of the community. It is a 192-page in Spanish, for the technical guide for free dpwnload.
More info at:
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The flickering connectivity system of the north Andean páramos
Suzette G.A. Flantua, Aaron O'Dea, Renske E. Onstein, Catalina Giraldo, Henry Hooghiemstra.
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The flickering connectivity system was published in June 2019 in the Journal of Biogeography.
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This publication is about how the Pleistocene climate change was the driver of significant elevational and spatial shifts in páramos causing dynamic changes in habitat connectivity across and within all mountain ranges. Some generalities emerge, including the fact that connectivity was greatest during the most ephemeral of times. However, the timing, duration, and degree of connectivity varied substantially among mountain ranges depending on their topographical configuration. The flickering connectivity system of the páramos uncovers the dynamic settings in which evolutionary radiations shaped the most diverse alpine biome on Earth.
This paper has a visualization as a supplement that can be downloaded at:
Follow the story on how the visualization was made and complement this publication at:
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Sky Islands: a time travel in the Andes mountains is a Master of Arts thesis document. It is an exploration of how to display scientific information using digital art, photography, 3D animation, and data visualization as contemporary tools to imagine ecosystems in the past.
This paper contains five parts: the first one, describes geographical and ecological context of the Andes Mountains, with a special focus in the Northern Andes and the Páramo ecosystem. Then, travel in time through the Earth’s cycles in a timeline of the last 2.4 million years, including a background of the ecological crises we are testifying and the negative effects in the modern human. Third, an overview of travel between Science, Arts and Technology as my personal experience of working in both science and arts and fifth, how the final piece took shape.
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Verde Oscuro is a video mapping projection masking the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) facade at UCSC in combination with an installation of live native California plants. The spectators travel through the past, present, and future, envisioning the ecological history of the DARC building. The audience perceives how a place that was initially a redwood forest some hundreds and thousands of years ago is now a building that could be a green building coexisting in balance with nature in the near future. My environmental design philosophy proposes the use of native California plants to promote the integration of nature with architecture. This visualization is the first step toward opening minds and creating awareness of the ground where the DARC stands today.
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Illustrated guide of pollen and native plants visited by bees
-Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Santander, Sucre, Atlántico,
and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta -Colombia\
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Catalina Giraldo, Ángela Rodríguez, Fermín J. Chamorro, Diana Obregón, Paula Montoya, Nedy Ramírez, Víctor Solarte, Guiomar Nates-Parra
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This illustrated guide published in Spanish in 2011 is the result of three years working in the Bees Lab Research, led by Professor Guiomar Nates at the National University of Colombia. As an educational tool for beekeepers shows the main plants visited by Apis mellifera and native stingless bees in five Colombian regions.
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Since ancient times, the bees have been considered dancing goddesses, mother goddesses or beings capable of preserving balance and harmony in the hive. Ancient cultures such as Sumerian, Arab, Egyptian and Australian, among others, praised bees for their creative power to produce the elixir of honey. Bees are not only honey, pollen, propolis and wax producers but have always been the main pollinators of plants and our diet depends on them. Bees pollinate about 70% of plants and thanks to them, plants can reproduce and create the next generation through fruits and seeds and then keep humanity feeding.
Check out this interesting Review for the Book by Victor H. Gonzalez- University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
This Photo Plant Guide #133 published in 2004 is from Cundinamarca - Albán, Granjas del Padre Luna, Common Plants, Colombia
This paper published in 2008 describes a sequence of sediments analysed at Caqueta Valley River in the colombian Amazon. A place called Manacaro island was studied by means of pollen analysis, interpretation, soil formation and radiocarbon dating. The resullt is the vegetation history changes that happend 13.000. years before present during the Late Glacial (Published in Spanish).
This paper published in 2008 describes a potential distribution modelling for Condalia thomasiana, an endemic plant species from the Checua valley river at Cundinamarca, Colombia. These plants population are endangered as a consequence of fragmentated habitats. (Published in Spanish).
Published in 2009. We describe and illustrate three new bee species of the genus Chilicola spinola from the Eastern Andes of Colombia.
This paper published in 2011 developed a composite pollen-based record of altitudinal vegetation changes from Lake Fuquene (5â—¦ N) in Colombia at 2540 m elevation on Andes Mountains. We quantitatively calibrated Arboreal Pollen percentages (AP%) into mean annual temperature (MAT) changes with an unprecedented ∼60-year resolution over the past 284 000 years.
This paper published in 2013 describes a record of environmental and climatic change in the northern Andes during the last interglacial–glacial cycle based on integrated information from pollen and grain size distributions (GSD).
This article published in 2013 describes the pollen of plant species as markers of honey from its geographical and botanical origin in four departments of Colombia. A basis to generate denomination of origin of honeys.