Tropical Andes
The Tropical Andes are located in South America following the path of the Andes. They run, mainly, through five countries, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The land initially was roughly but has decreased to , leaving 25% of the original land. Due to the massive amount of area the landscape is diverse. Diverse landscapes lead to diverse habitats and the ability to provide needed resources for many species. The diverse landscape includes snow-topped mountains down to canyons and valleys. The different vegetation as altitude changes includes tropical rainforests at , cloud forests ranging from , and the highest altitudes of contain grasslands up to snow. The most diverse cloud forests found in Peru and Bolivia covers . Dry forests and woodlands are also found throughout the Tropical Andes. The range is also home to the deepest gorge in Peru at deep and Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable water with an altitude of .
Andes
The Andes Mountains host large ore and salt deposits and some of their eastern fold and thrust belt acts as traps for commercially exploitable amounts of hydrocarbons. In the forelands of the Atacama desert some of the largest porphyry copper mineralizations occurs making Chile and Peru the first and second largest exporters of copper in the world. Porphyry copper in the western slopes of the Andes has been generated by hydrothermal fluids (mostly water) during the cooling of plutons or volcanic systems. The porphyry mineralization further benefited from the dry climate that let them largely out of the disturbing actions of meteoric water. The dry climate in the central western Andes has also led to the creation of extensive saltpeter deposits which were extensively mined until the invention of synthetic nitrates. Yet another result of the dry climate are the salars of Atacama and Uyuni, the first one being the largest source of lithium today and the second the world's largest reserve of the element. Early Mesozoic and Neogene plutonism in Bolivia's Cordillera Central created the Bolivian tin belt as well as the famous, now depleted, deposits of Cerro Rico de Potosí.