Paramo

Paramo is a high-altitude ecosystem of the northern Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, occupying the zone above the continuous forest line and below the permanent snowline, typically between 3,000 and 4,800 meters. It is consistently humid with sharp daily swings between below freezing and about 10 degrees Celsius, mean annual temperatures of 2 to 10 degrees, and often more than 2,000 millimeters of rainfall a year. Its vegetation is dominated by giant rosette plants, shrubs and grasses across three zones, superparamo, grass paramo and subparamo, each with its own tussock grasses, cushion plants and shrubs adapted to the extremes, and the biome is considered a hot spot of recent plant evolution now threatened by grazing, burning and climate change.