A concerted research effort to advance the hydrological understanding of tropical páramos

Abstract

Páramos, a neotropical alpine grassland‐peatland biome of the northern Andes and Central America, play an essential role in regional and global cycles of water, carbon, and nutrients. They act as water towers, delivering water and ecosystem services from the high mountains down to the Pacific, Caribbean, and Amazon regions. Páramos are also widely recognized as a biodiversity and climate change hot spots, yet they are threatened by anthropogenic activities and environmental changes. Despite their importance for water security and carbon storage, and their vulnerability to human activities, only three decades ago, páramos were severely understudied. Increasing awareness of the need for hydrological evidence to guide sustainable management of páramos prompted action for generating data and for filling long‐standing knowledge gaps. This has led to a remarkably successful increase in scientific knowledge, induced by a strong interaction between the scientific, policy, and (local) management communities. A combination of well‐established and innovative approaches has been applied to data collection, processing, and analysis. In this review, we provide a short overview of the historical development of research and state of knowledge of the hydrometeorology, flux dynamics, anthropogenic impacts, and the influence of extreme events in páramos. We then present emerging technologies for hydrology and water resources research and management applied to páramos. We discuss how converging science and policy efforts have leveraged traditional and new observational techniques to generate an evidence base that can support the sustainable management of páramos. We conclude that this co‐evolution of science and policy was able to successfully cover different spatial and temporal scales. Lastly, we outline future research directions to showcase how sustainable long‐term data collection can foster the responsible conservation of páramos water towers.

Impacts of Global Change on the Spatial Dynamics of Treeline in Venezuelan Andes

“…This increase in the density of woody vegetation increases the air's relative humidity by modifying radiation exposure in the air and soil. Similarly, the interception capacity of horizontal precipitation (fog) is rising since the contact surface increases, possibly allowing species with a higher water requirement to colonize these spaces (Correa et al, 2020). The soil organic matter may also increase since the types of vegetation such as the shrubland, Páramo forest, and the Montane cloud forest produce a more significant amount of necro-mass and organic matter (Little et al, 2016).…”

Climate Vulnerability Assessment of the Espeletia Complex on Páramo Sky Islands in the Northern Andes

“…Despite statistical imputation-like approaches such as environmental downscaling have been considered to model climate at a higher resolution for specific Páramo complexes (Mavárez et al, 2018), consistently applying such techniques across cordilleras seems unfeasible because accuracy would be constrained by the accessibility of fine-scale bioclimatic data from regional weather stations. These restraints are likely to be overcome soon by incorporating microclimate into SDMs (Lembrechts et al, 2019) through mechanistic algorithms (Lembrechts and Lenoir, 2020) physiological models (Cortés et al, 2013;López-Hernández and Cortés, 2019), hydrological equations (Rodríguez- Morales et al, 2019;Correa et al, 2020), in situ data logging, and remote sensing (Ramón-Reinozo et al, 2019;Zellweger et al, 2019).…”

Chirripó hydrological research site: Advancing stable isotope hydrology in the Central American Páramo

“…Between September 2015 and December 2017, relative humidity (%), air temperature ( C), and precipitation amounts (mm/h) were recorded using a LW301 weather F I G U R E 2 Time series plot showing (a) average daily water temperature ( C) of Lake Ditkevi (left y-axis, black circles) and daily rainfall (mm/day) registered in Base Crestones (right y-axis, blue bars), (b) δ18O (‰) composition for precipitation (blue circles) and lake water (green circles), and stream water (red circles), (c) d-excess (‰) for precipitation (blue squares) and lake water (green squares), and stream water (red squares) Wright et al, 2017). Overall, the information about the importance of the P aramo ecosystem was identified much earlier in South America than in Central America which led to a more structured research program in the Andes compared to Central America (Correa et al, 2020). Therefore, the isotopic and hydrometric information collected at CHRS can help define and promote future hydrological research in tropical montane ecosystems and can endorse adaptation policies to alleviate the impacts of potential changes in the water balance of the P aramo and the lowlands that rely on its water supply.…”