A thick mapping of the San Juan Basin (Pasco, Peru): co-designing (post-)mining landscape-ecological transitions at the frontier of an extreme Andean environment

Abstract

The San Juan Basin’s ecologies exist amidst widespread landscape ecological degradation in a high-altitude environment of the Peruvian Tropical Andes. Designing (post-)mining landscapes for such settings necessitates interdisciplinary coalitions and tools materialising caring landscape ecological transitions. Thick mapping tools can incorporate interdisciplinary inputs into an incremental co-design process that thickens the present while confronting (post-)mining scenarios. This paper used the San Juan Basin as a case study to test such a thick mapping approach in the co-design of (post-)mining landscapes. The mapping aimed for (1) a spatial-ecological understanding of the basin’s pollution network, (2) the identification of strategic intervention sites, and (3) the co-design of initial (post-)mining landscape development strategies, followed by further design-research questions. The co-design process resulted in a cascading landscape-ecological rehabilitation strategy articulating consecutive interventions across basin altitudes. Three projects in Quiulacocha, Sacra Familia, and the Upamayo Delta feature open-ended, transitional landscapes addressing water pollution. The thick mapping enabled us to tackle various factors of landscape-ecological disturbance simultaneously and prioritise goals while considering design engineering possibilities from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The co-design process responded to mining disturbances while encouraging proactivity in gradually reshaping Andean landscapes in different ecological terms. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.