Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation or forced labor, both within a country and across international borders, is a lucrative criminal activity that is of major concern to the United States and the international community. While most trafficking victims still appear to originate from South and Southeast Asia or the former Soviet Union, human trafficking is a growing problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries in Latin America serve as source, transit, and destination countries for trafficking victims. Latin America is also a primary source for the up to17,500 people that are trafficked to the United States each year.On June 5, 2006, the State Department released its sixth annual report on human trafficking, Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP), dividing countries into four groups according to the efforts they were making to combat trafficking. Tier 3 countries are those that have not made an adequate effort to combat trafficking and are subject to sanctions. Latin America had a higher percentage of Tier 3 countries in the 2005 TIP report than any other region.

Hydrology and climatology at Laguna La Gaiba, lowland Bolivia: complex responses to climatic forcings over the last 25 000 years

“…A similar mechanism has been suggested by Bush and Silman (2004). Again, it is difficult to place the Altiplano sites into this framework as convection over Amazonia is usually identified as the main moisture source for this area, although Vizy and Cook (2007) Some of the complexity of the YD across the tropical Americas is discussed by Bush and Metcalfe (2012). It is increasingly evident that the structure of Greenland ice core δ 18 O records is not a straightforward template for hydroclimatic change in the tropics (Deplazes et al, 2013).…”

Influence of seasonal variation on the hydro-biogeochemical characteristics of two upland lakes in the Southeastern Amazon, Brazil

“…However, the impacts of these land use changes may not yet exceed the magnitude of natural variability of hydrologic cycles, but they do signal that transition to a disturbance-dominated regime must be considered as a climate driver (Davidson et al 2012). Considering the effects of climate seasonality on lacustrine environments, it is widely demonstrated that the rainfall regime in short time scales has a direct influence on lake levels of the Amazon region (Bush et al 2002, Bush and Silman 2004, Bush and Metcalfe 2012. However, information related to how long lake levels respond to daily or monthly rainfall variations is almost unknown.…”

Effects of Pleistocene climate changes on species ranges and evolutionary processes in the Neotropical Atlantic Forest

“…Then, during the subsequent expansion phase, divergent populations extended their ranges until they reached populations that diverged in other refugia. A recent criticism of the refugia model considers that shifts in forest species composition, instead of fragmentation, have been the main impact of global glaciations in the Neotropics (Colinvaux & De Oliveira, ; Bush & Metcalfe, ). Species composition shifts could also impact biological diversification, without the need of replacement of biomes.…”

“…In another model, the gradients model, dissimilar selection regimes across forest types are important diversification drivers (Endler, ; Smith, ; Jump et al ., ). Because glacial cycles modify forest distribution and composition (Bush & Metcalfe, ), they are also able to alter selection regimes and gene flow patterns, impacting on diversification. A last model considering the range shifts important for evolution is the vanishing refuge hypothesis (Vanzolini & Williams, ; Damasceno et al ., ), which explains diversification by combining forest retractions and composition shifts associated with climate changes, vicariance, and adaptation to new forest types.…”