- published: 12 Sep 2015
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The term páramo can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as “all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline”. A more narrow term classifies the páramo according to its regional placement - specifically located in “the northern Andes of South America and adjacent southern Central America”. The páramo is the ecosystem of the regions above the continuous forest line, yet below the permanent snowline. It is a “Neotropical high mountain biome with a vegetation composed mainly of giant rosette plants, shrubs and grasses”
In the strictest sense of the term, all páramo ecosystems are located in the Neotropics, namely South and Central America. Scattered throughout the regions between 11N° and 8S° latitudes, these ecosystems are located mainly in the NW corner of South America: specifically in the Cordillera de Mérida mountain range of Venezuela, and in Peru and Ecuador.
Páramo ecosystems are also found in the mountain ranges of the Andes in Colombia, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, as well as in the regions of Huehuetenango and El Quiché of Guatemala in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. The Cordillera de Talamanca of Costa Rica and Panama has a good example of the páramo. In northern Ecuador, the Guandera Biological Station is a fairly undisturbed páramo ecosystem.