Páramo

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 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". According to scientists, páramos may be "evolutionary hot spots" and among the fastest evolving regions on Earth.

In the strictest sense of the term, all páramo ecosystems are located in the Neotropics, specifically South and Central America. Scattered throughout the regions between 11°N and 8°S latitudes, these ecosystems are located mainly in the northwest corner of South America, in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

In Venezuela, the páramo occurs in the Cordillera de Mérida. Páramo ecosystems are also found in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia, and in the regions of Huehuetenango and El Quiché of Guatemala in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. The Cordillera de Talamanca of Costa Rica and the westernmost part of Panama has páramo. In northern Ecuador, the Guandera Biological Station is a fairly undisturbed páramo ecosystem.

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Wikipedia