Flying Rivers
Two Andean capitals drink rain that begins far to the east. Moisture the Amazon rainforest breathes into the sky rides the wind up the mountains and falls on the high paramo grasslands that feed Quito and Bogota. The same engine that priced an Amazon-to-soy corridor now follows that water back to its source and measures how much of each city's rain the forest makes.
RECON 2008-2017 open climatology · one moisture map, re-read at two cities · every figure traced to source
More of Quito's rain is made in the Amazon than anywhere else.
Of the rain that falls on the high grasslands feeding Quito, the Amazon is the single largest source, in a typical year. Those grasslands drain east toward the Amazon, and the prevailing wind carries Amazon moisture straight up the eastern slope. On the map, the teal ribbon's width is that measured share, drawn from the western Amazon into the water tower.
Bogota's water is a genuine mix, and that honesty is the point.
For Bogota the Amazon is a minority, , behind the closer Orinoco basin at and behind moisture off the ocean and other land. We report the measured Amazon slice, not the whole city. On the map, Bogota's thin teal Amazon ribbon sits behind a wider amber Orinoco ribbon. The reservoir that supplies much of the city, Chuza, holds . Bogota is not an Amazon water tower, and we do not call it one.
In the dry season, the Amazon's share climbs.
A separate three-model seasonal cross-check (AMSSRAB) shows the Amazon's share rising through the June-August dry season, to for Quito and for Bogota, when local rain is scarce and the forest upwind matters most. Step through the year:
This seasonal cross-check is coarser than the annual number and is computed separately. It corroborates the pattern; it does not replace the annual figure and is not a claim about any single drought.
A region, not a pixel.
The source map works in degree squares, about km across near the equator. A paramo intake is far smaller than one square, so this is a useful regional attribution, never a per-pixel or single-drought number. We show exactly what is measured and what is not: the attribution and the seasonal check are done; the water-supply price stays locked until observed hydrology is in. Any future valuation would anchor to the real protected paramo, never a grid square.
Not a forecast; not an attribution of any single drought. RECON is a 2008-2017 climatology with no year-to-year signal.
One audited method. A library of corridors.
Nothing new was measured for the Andes. We re-read the same open moisture map that priced the Amazon-to-soy corridor, now at each city's water tower, and as a check it reproduces that corridor's headline weight w = exactly. Both corridors ride one audited path, which is the point: Fluvion is a corridor engine, not a one-off soy calculator. Turning this attribution into a water-supply price is the next gate, not today's claim. It needs what we will not invent: observed river flow that the Amazon signal explains better than season-average and last-year baselines, the same bar the soy corridor already cleared. Until it does, the price stays locked.
A same-map consistency check, not independent validation: it shows both corridors use the identical audited method, not that the attribution is externally confirmed.
Corridor one is priced. This is corridor two.
Soy shows the completed chain: moisture, to harvest, to an avoided-loss value that already beats the land price. The Andes shows the same chain travel to municipal water security, and stay honest where the evidence is not yet in. Serious counterparties can inspect the full attribution and the provenance ledger, re-run every number on this page, or help close the hydrology gate that turns this map into a water-security price. Every figure traces to a committed computation.