The “Estación Científica San Francisco” (RBSF) is located in the Cordillera Real, an eastern range of the South Ecuadorian Andes, which is the weather divide between the humid Amazon (“Oriente”) and the dry Inter-Andean region. In southern Ecuador the Andes are not as high as in the central and northern part of the country, but the topography of that area, called the Huancabamba depression, is more complicated.