Bosque Fray Jorge National Park (hereafter Fray Jorge ) comprises 9,959 ha on the coast of Chile’s Region IV (Coquimbo), approximately 400 km north of Santiago and 100 km south of La Serena (30°41’S, 71°40’W) (Fig. 1). It is a Biosphere Reserve and has been protected from grazing and disturbance since 1941 (Squeo et al. 2004). As such, it is a biotic oasis surrounded by agricultural and increasingly disturbed terrain (Bahre 1979). The climate is Mediterranean, with ca. 130 mm of annual precipitation measured since 1989 at an on-site meteorological station, 90% falling in winter (May-Sept). Summers are warm and dry, although fog and coastal clouds are common. Vegetation is characterized as coastal matorral steppe (Gajardo 1994), generally spiny and drought-deciduous or evergreen, with heavy shrub cover (ca. 50-60%; Meserve et al. 2009) and understory herbs on a primarily sandy substrate (Gutiérrez et al. 2010).https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/spmns/1001/thumbnail.jp
