Yungas

The Yungas (Aymara yunka; 'warm or temperate Andes or earth', Quechua yunka; 'warm area on the slopes of the Andes') is a bioregion of a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from Peru and Bolivia, and extends into Northwest Argentina at the slope of the Andes pre-cordillera. It is a transitional zone between the Andean highlands and the eastern forests. Like the surrounding areas, the Yungas belong to the Neotropical realm; the climate is rainy, humid, and warm.

== History == During the Inca Empire, the term yunga referred to both the western and eastern slopes of the Andes and their inhabitants. In the Spanish colonial era, it became primarily associated with the western foothills near the desert coast and the local Indians. Today, yunga can refer to the lower slopes on both sides of the Andes, though yungas mostly denotes the eastern foothills between the Andes and the Amazon basin, with both having mostly lost their ethnic associations. == Setting == thumb|right|Vegetation map of Peru. The Yungas is marked as "Mountain rain forest" in blue. The Yungas forests are extremely diverse, ranging from moist lowland forest to evergreen montane forest and cloud forests. The terrain, formed by valleys, fluvial mountain trails and streams, is extremely rugged and varied, contributing to the ecological diversity and richness. A complex mosaic of habitats occur with changing latitude as well as elevation. There are high levels of biodiversity and species endemism throughout the Yungas regions. Many of the forests are evergreen, and the South Andean Yungas contains what may be the last evergreen forests resulting from Quaternary glaciations.